Back At It

After a month or so without lessons, we met up with S for some more pony bootcamp. Poor Bridget, the look on her face when she saw who was waiting for us at the ring was priceless! Her lesson vacation is over and she is sad.

The weather continues to be miserable, so any new photos look like this. But don't worry, I added some old ones to this post! ;)

We started off by discussing my goals for the year and came up with a little game plan to get there. Yay! I just love people who are able to really listen to what your saying and make appropriate suggestions. I've hesitated to post goals here because with horses anything can happen and honestly I've been in a bit of a funk, but the plan is to do a couple of the local open shows, a one day dressage test day away from home, a one day horse trials, again a ferry ride away, and a small hunter jumper show in the fall. There's also a backcountry camping trip in the interior of the province we might try to make it to - it's supposed to be a lot of fun. The costs of travelling anywhere from here are astronomical, so for now the plan is to just get the pony out and about to anything local or semi-local that's remotely appropriate. That may mean trotting tiny x's or riding HUS with the QH crowd. The end goal is obviously a proper little eventing pony and a proper eventing season in 2016 when we will (hopefully) be more apt to be competitive. S thinks that's a do-able goal, which is encouraging.

From a couple of weeks ago, slouchy me + cute Midge

As for the lesson itself, all my trail riding and slow miles really have made a fitter Bridget. The trot work wasn't as pretty as it has been, mostly because the pony was a bit uptight because she really wanted to canter! So we did, and S was very complimentary over how improved it was. She's still not strong enough to hold it for more than one tour around the arena, but she happily jumped back up to canter after a mini trot break through the corner that's currently her nemesis. We worked on spirals and haunches in as well and Bridget was really improved there too - I couldn't have been happier with her! We kept it short and sweet and I'm super excited for next week. I'm still taking a step back from really drilling the ring work - she's in a way better frame of mind these days so I'm sticking with what's working - lots of trail rides, and the odd 'fun' thing in the arena (grids, obstacles, etc). What I am going to do though is start to lunge her for 5 min or so prior to every ride to try and help bring that canter along, and plan my trail rides a little more around going out where the footing is appropriate for more trot and canter sets. I'm having so much fun with little Bridget!

'Helping' me put away jumps

I have been doing some 'behind the scenes' work with Ginger too - don't worry, she has some adventures planned this year too!