Thursday 22nd January

Today with Blossom I started on line, but she really wanted to have a roll and today for whatever reason she just couldn’t decided where she wanted to roll. So I decided it was easier just to let her loose to have a roll, and as soon as took the halter off she rolled nearly straight away!

Well seen as she was now at liberty I thought I would just play like this, we mainly just played with stick to me around obstacles and following the rail and she was really good.
I then tied the SS round her neck and jumped on and started with riding the rail of the arena and checking I could stop with just the string. We then played with moving the FQ and HQ and it was better today, so I must have got it right yesterday!! We then played with the figure of eight pattern in walk and trot and she was really good and stayed pretty relaxed.

I then saddled and Eddy had suggested that I try her in a cradle bridle to see if this will help with my lateral flexion and help her to bend the correct way. Well we tried to just use one of Eddy’s cradle bridles, but it was far too big for her and even if we had punched holes it wouldn’t have helped. So instead I just attached the bit to one of my own bridles so that I could try it on her and see what she thought of it before I buy one. Well she seemed to really like it.. I only rode her in it for about 10 minutes, but everything did go really well and she was very soft and didn’t pull into the pressure like she does in the halter. So I will ride her again in this and see how it goes.

We then played the property game at liberty in the arena, there was Myself, Corine, Sophie, Barbara, Marieke and Eddy. It was a little bit crazy at the start as all the horses were leaving there owners, except Blossom she stayed with me the whole time. The scary bit was all the horses wanted to come on to my property as I was next to the gate, so it was sometimes quite a challenge to get Blossom to stick to me and chase the other horses. But it was really good fun for all of us and it really tested my relationship with Blossom which turns out to be better than I expected!!

I then played with Smarty and today I decided to just do a little and mainly just play in walk to let him fully recover from his injury, he is now 100% but I prefer to give them a little longer just to make sure everything is fully healed.

We played with:
1. Friendly game with the CS
2. Extreme friendly with the CS in all zones
3. Friendly game with the ball - bouncing it around him and also up onto his back and HQ
4. Yo Yo game, trying to get the back up a little better and he draw to me with both eyes
5. Circling game in walk, but today I really worked on getting him to look into the circle and focus on me as like Blossom he tends to look out of the circle and also sometimes leans on the halter.
6. Sideways without a fence, still needs some work but better than I expected it to be.
7. Stick to me in walk, trot and back up - which went well.

Eddy also offered to film me playing with Smarty, but as I didn’t want to do very much with him I decided it wasn’t really worth it today, but maybe we will film him another day when I can do more with him.