Bouncing back

Happy labor Day everyone!! Hope you all had a great long weekend too :)

more time to indulge in this

Despite feeling a bit down and out lately, this long holiday weekend was just what the doctored ordered for Tillie and I. While I have other stuff to work out, my feeling about where we are is back to being supremely confident.

Friday evening we had another dressage lesson focusing on relaxation and getting Tillie independently trusting her balance. Asking her to seek contact no matter how high or low we asked her to be and be ok with staying there until otherwise asked.

In addition we worked on using sitting trot and my seat to push and pull her striding in and out. Compressing turns out to be much more of a challenge!!

Tillie and her old buddy being cute 

I also FINALLY had another jump lesson with P...way over do and I finally had my quiet, lovely horse back after a minor set back in our training.

P loves this shirt mostly because of the glaring line down the middle of my back so she can holler when I collapse one way or another. 

It was great timing too going into a paperchase we entered as a farm which consists of lots of trails, galloping, and XC jumping.  I was more excited though because we surprised a fellow barn mate with some really fun shirts and wedding related paraphernalia to embarrass her :)

Much to my delight and surprise Tillie was a rockstar through most of it. I was a bit worried being in a group she would be wound up and be finicky about where she was positioned in the pack, but she kept a cool head and was pretty game about anything.

Gettin our groove back

I chose to give her today off with  my full list we have planned this week...but practicing galloping and rating in the gallop has been on the list for some time (and Ive been avoiding). But Im determined and excited to figure it out for our next event.

Even more exciting is Training level jumps arent looking so intimidating anymore...and a few of the friendlier prelim ones are seeming doable too! I have no intention of moving up to prelim at all, but its kind of nice to be able to school that and feel like Training level isnt our top most effort when we do it.

Ill post a more description post soon! Ill be sipping a glass of wine after a long day of trailer cleaning (and i mean hose it out, scrub it and deep clean type of cleaning).