Saturday 29th Novemeber

Well I think I am getting the routine of things around here now, still know idea what all the horses are called but I know the difference between them so that’s something I suppose.

After lunch I went out to play with Blossom I had the indoor school to myself for about 3 hours, so that was great!!

We started with friendly and then played with driving from zone 3 around the school looking for different obstacle for Blossom to put her nose on. We the played with yo yo, circles, circles over a jump and then moved on to playing with change of direction. This wasn’t going very well, and just at this stage Eddy appeared so he gave me a few ideas of ways I can play to try and help get the change of direction. So I played around with these new ideas and found which ones worked best for Blossom, after playing around with this for about half an hour we were starting to get some nice changes on the left rein to the right. But the right rein to the left still needs a lot of work, so at the moment I am just breaking it all down to encourage Blossom to just come to me when I start walking backwards.

We then played with the figure of eight pattern and I found that Blossom has problem drawing into me going to the right, same as change of direction. So it will be interesting to see if breaking down the change of direction to help Blossom understand and help her confidence - will this also improve our figure of eight pattern…

Blossom then decided she wanted to go and stand on the pedestal as this is her favourite spot. I have noticed while she is up there she keeps her back legs as far away as possible… So today I thought it would be a good idea to try and get her to walk over the pedestal to encourage her to put her back feet on, I didn’t want to ask her to stand her back feet on, just simple walk over and let her back feet touch the pedestal . This proved to be more of a challenge than I originally thought it would be, but by the end she was walking over and letting one foot touch the pedestal so I left it at that and will hopefully continue to do this with her to improve her confidence.

I then saddled and starting riding the rail of the arena, adding in some sideways and nine step back ups and once she was settled started adding in some transitions to trot. Eddy was watching me do this and one thing he noticed was that when I do my 9 step back up I don’t stayed stopped for very long… And thought it would be better for Blossom for me to let her stay still for longer to try and teach her to not always go. I know this, but of course it wasn’t until Eddy said it to me I thought why am I not already doing that!! It’s brilliant having Eddy picking up on all these little things I am doing wrong as they are going to help me lots!!


Smarty was much more relaxed today with me playing friendly game with the CS, and also just with my hands on his legs so that was nice to see. Today we also played with all the other 6 games, everything went quite well considering how new all this is to him so I was very impressed at how quickly he is learning!

Eddy had suggested yesterday to play friendly game with him with the 22ft rope around his bum to get him more used to things near his back legs. Eddy had just finished playing with a horse so I asked him if he would do it with him first and I could watch. Well I am so glad Eddy done this with him first as he really didn’t like it very much to start with and was cantering round in circles trying to get it off him, I would have ended up tangled up in all the ropes!! But very quickly he started to become used to the idea and was happy to walk round with the occasional trot if the rope slipped down below his hocks. So I had a little shot and managed fine and Smarty really started to get the idea that things touching his legs are not going to hurt him. So I am going t start doing this with him everyday to get him totally used to this!
I finished with Smarty riding him bareback around the arena in just walk and trot, he was really good so I am going to start doing more bareback work with him. Because of his mud fever spreading up to his girth area I don’t want to use saddle on him again until the girth area is fully healed and all the hair s grown back, so for now all riding ill be bareback!