Here we go again.....getting ready for round 2
Sorry things have been so quiet recently, been a very busy 2 weeks! Firstly I've just started a new weekend job to earn a few extra pennies at a lovely dressage yard in South Warwickshire, with the talented rider Natalie Allen. Just doing general groom stuff but its great to be around so many gorgeous horses and to get an insight into what it is like being a professional dressage rider.
As for the giant horse, he is very happy at the moment - I last rode on Saturday and he went like a dream, we learnt our prelim 18 test that we will be doing this weekend (more on that in a bit) and he was amazing, I can only wish that he will be that good when we do the test for real. Following on from my jumping post the Thursday before the great Saturday, we had a full jumping session with grids so perhaps the jumping relaxed him hence why he went so well on the Saturday? I'm putting this theory to the test tomorrow, I'm going to do a full jumping session with grids again on Friday night and see if it affects our performance at our next competition on Saturday.
The naughty boy has been having daily loading practice, first attempt took an hour and a half but it has been getting better over the last 2 weeks and his owner has been getting him on with no problems in recent days. My only worry is that his owner cant come with us tomorrow so a friend is taking us in her trailer so fingers crossed he still loads without Dad around.
Onto our next dressage outing, that will be this Saturday (9th March) at Solihull Riding Club where we are doing prelim 4 and prelim 18. I learnt after the last competition that we need to get there LOTS earlier to give him more time to settle, and to do 2 tests rather than 1 so with any luck the 2nd test will be great and he can get all his excitement out in the first test. I've not practiced my 1st test (prelim 4) at all yet which I feel rather bad about, but I've practiced prelim 18 and that went really well, it is a nice test to ride as its fairly similar to prelim 1 just with the serpentine added in.
I probably wont post again until after the test (may well end up being Monday when I'm back at work), so keep your fingers crossed for me everyone and hopefully we will come back with another frilly! The classes will probably be bigger at Solihull compared to Swallowfields so competition will be tough, but if he goes like he did last Saturday I think we might just do well. First 6 in each class qualify for Solihull's dressage finals.....eekk! No pressure then.
