Gearing Up

I had the ride of my LIFE on Midge on Saturday. He went TO the bridle. He stepped under instead of up-and-down. And he actually took a half-halt, about 50% of the time. Un. Be. Lievable.

It goes without saying that THAT will never happen again! :)

I actually had a lot of good horse days last week. Cleo and I are dissecting the tests, working on a few pieces at a time, and gearing up for my trial run of the Young Rider Grand Prix test this weekend which, if you haven't read it, is a foul, foul mother. It's as hard, if not harder, than the actual Grand Prix, which is fine, just that the Brentina test really isn't that hard in comparison. Yikes!

Poor Ella gets to suffer through 4-3 this weekend, twice, so we gave it a run and it actually wasn't that dreadful. It's a busy beast of a test too, but she's getting fitter and quicker in the rebalancing, particularly at canter, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

My mom is out of town again, so I'm torturing her poor pony by making him really work - pirouettes that aren't floaty, flying changes that aren't floaty, proper canter collection that isn't floaty... basically, no floaty work! He's getting WAY stronger, and the trot is getting really quite fun; I even made some passage-piaffe-passage transitions that didn't suck, and I got 5 one tempis twice on Saturday. Yay!

Yesterday was so pretty I hacked everyone around instead of doing any proper work, though Cleo did have to make one passage-piaffe-passage transition downhill (with no spurs! yay), and Ella did have to stretch through the WHOLE body, and not just her neck, at canter. Midge had to do quality control on our hayfields, a job he takes very seriously. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.

My task is to try and stay on top of all my paperwork and life stuff, because I'm showing all three this weekend at Morven, then going with Cleo to the NJ Horse Park next weekend, and then up to Lendon Gray's for the weekend after that. And then it's Scott Hassler at home, saddle guru Colleen the weekend after that, one weekend to breathe, and GLADSTONE!

Zoinks! Better do some laundry.