Monday 1st December

Today with Blossom I did pretty much the same as I did yesterday online, really working hard trying to get her confident enough to give me two eyes. I now feel I have to be a little more fussy (not sure if that is the right word) of what I accept from Blossom, I think now as we are progressing and if we want to keep progressing I am going to have to start asking little more from her and me more precise. Well lots of thinking needed on this…

Today riding Blossom was fun!! I can’t remember that last time I said that or felt it, I was actually laughing while riding round. Well we started with riding the rail of the indoor arena in walk and adding in some 9 step back up and the occasional few strides of trot. Eddy had built a round pen so I decided to follow the rail of that in walk and then adding in some trot, to start with Blossom could only managed a few trot strides and then got very impulsive. After lots of long rest periods we were soon able to do a lap, then 2 laps and then before I knew it I was able to trot as many laps as I wanted. Eddy was out watching and was giving me some helpful tips as I was riding round and then also helped me with my ridden sideways, so that was a huge help!

We finished by doing a full lap of the indoor arena in trot!! It was calm, collected and I had a loose rein the whole time. I was so happy with this, big achievement for Blossom!!

Today with Smarty I didn’t do anything too exciting.. We played again with all 7 games, most of them are going well. Circling seems to be the problem game at the moment well the disengage the HQ part of the game - so I went back and checked my driving game and the HQ yield I would say is really good… Maybe I am not being clear enough in my communication for him, if I continue to have problems I will get Eddy to to have a look and see where I am going wrong or what I can to help improve things. Maybe I am just expecting too much too soon…
I then rode him bareback and he was really good, so we finished on that for the day.