Thursday 26th February

Today Eddy offered to come and have a look at myself and Corine play so he could help us point out any holes in our play that we can work on when we get home. After we had played a little indoors Eddy thought it would be a good idea to go outside and play at liberty in the round pen and he could watch and see what problems we were having. I was first and today nothing was working, so it was really difficult for Eddy really to help with specific problems I would normally have. But what we did find that Blossom seems to have real difficulty with is change of direction at liberty (which I have done with her before and it went really well) But anyway today she just couldn’t give me the other eye, so therefore the change didn’t happen as it should. Eddy helped me a little with this and gave me some strategies I can do to try and help her with this, but I just couldn’t get any of them to work. So Eddy then had a go at playing with her, and he had very similar problems. So it was interesting to watch what Eddy done to help her with her confidence and how he tried to make the right think easy and the wrong thing more difficult.
Corine then played and her liberty isn’t great, so it was really interesting listening to Eddy helping Corine and the different strategies he gave her for a different type of horse.

Eddy was then going to watch us ride, but we had spent so much time outside playing at liberty that we had totally run out of time for today, normally it wouldn’t have mattered and we could have played longer. But tonight we had promised Nadine we would be home early as she was cooking a meal for us tonight and a little leaving dinner for the three of us.

Wednesday 25th February

Last night we went out for a lovely meal to an Indian restaurant in Brugge for a leaving dinner for myself and Corine with Eddy and Marieke. We had a brilliant night, but it was later than we would normally be up.

So today I was really tired and I think it really showed in my play. Again today because of the course I was playing with the ponies through lunch - we had a little warm up online and everything went really well. I then mounted Smarty and lead Blossom and we started with following the rail and today from the start they were so calm and relaxed. We played with transitions in walk, trot, canter and stand, backup and I couldn’t fault anything. Corine was watching me ride and commented on how calm the ponies were and she thought it was due to my own energy levels being so low (the fact I didn’t stop yawning the whole ride, was a clue I was tired) So this was something to think about were they so calm and relaxed because my energy was low or was it because they have been doing this for the last few days and are now in a routine..