Autumn has been taking on board the dressage training and I finally dropped my stirrups a few holes! It gave me a much better position in the saddle but wow did my thighs hurt after, I haven’t ridden with stirrups that long in years! We have been practising one of the intro tests to get our skills up and know it quite well now, so aiming to have a go at the other one we have so there’s a bit more variety in the schooling, then hopefully in a month or two we can enter our first competition! I did let her have a break from all the flat work though and we did have a jumping session, which she loved, I put one on the fences up to about 80cm just to see what she would do and she jumped it well, I’m still not 100% sure she’s able to do an 80 course out anymore but we will see as we get towards Spring and the temperature improves plus I will be keeping her on her new senior balancer.
Aria has been good when schooling, listening a lot more and less mad minutes of galloping and leaping around, which is positive. She is however becoming a bit bolshy when being brought in from the field – she sees to have lost her awareness of where she plants her legs and body, causing a few squished moments for me! It even ended up with both her and me getting zapped one evening when she tried to get pushy through the electric gate – not pleasant. An inhand ground work session will be in order for the next week I think!
We have had a great start to 2019 and I’m really looking forward to getting our training underway and moving up the heights, the prospect of a different discipline is also exciting, although I’m not sure how good we will be at it but we will give it a go! I’m starting to plan some of the shows for the next few months and hope to get Aria out to an in hand one too so she can get some more experience!
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