Sunday May 30th

Wet wet wet day again. But I must get on with things. Sent Mandy a txt, and she kindly offered her arena for me to use.

Went down there and did about 30 mins schooling in the rain... oh joy!

Worked on: Basics. (as always - trying to watch my generally appalling leg position and heels!!) - the great thing about mirrors!
Leg yielding (good to the right - still a bit of shoulder dropping to the left but I can now usually catch that in the nick of time...)
Shoulder In - ok to the left, getting better to the right...
collecting the canter up more - walk-canter-walk - good to the left, some issues to the right today but they came right after a couple of gos.
General comment - been 5 days with no riding, I felt somewhat unco, D felt lazy... lol. Mind you , the weather didn't help!

Back into it again tomorrow - hopefully if it doesnt rain tonight the paddock here will be good to ride in.

Toying with idea of bringing him in again tonight although its not raining.

The start of a new blog

I am hopeless at Blogging. However, its high time I got my act together.

I've decided to make a special blog for Dorian (because he is special) and so that I can use it as a sort of training diary. OK, so, background

Dorian is a 17.2 1/2hh chestnut gelding by Dream Boy. His owner, Jo, has moved to melbourne for a few years, so I am lucky enough to have him living in my paddock while she's there. Its an exciting time for me, he is so lovely, and I feel very blessed.

He's 8, and has done the basics, although has limited competition experience.

I hope to quietly bring him through a few grades of dressage, and show him. I also love hacking out, and a little showhunter, so thats something we'll do to mix it up a bit.

Anyway, I have had him here since the end of January. So far, I've taken him to a couple of shows, and been very lucky, at his first outing, the Manawatu Showing champs, he picked up a number of ribbons in the open classes (we had to go open as I don't have a height certificate for him yet) among some very good compay. His second show was a local Sports day and he won Champion hack.

We have regular lessons with Mandy Littlejohn, which is super for the motivation and gives us lots to work on.

Our first dressage outing, not so good - the ground was awful, and sadly, our poor boy pulled his glutes when he slipped on the uneven ground. That really mucked up our day, and he had a couple of bowen treatments (thanks Sonya) and a week off to recover.

so, here we are at the end of May. The weather has been awful, and I've been down at the police college on an Advocacy course. So, our lovely boy has had no work for a few days. Today was equally awful, and the ground here is wet. Luckily, Mandy has allowed me to use her arena so we went there today for some schooling.

The reason I am trying to get organised is that we are also entered for the Tielcey Winter dressage series which has a show this weekend. I've only entered for the Saturday, as I really do need to spend some time with Darcy and the kids, but would dearly like to get Dorian out too. We are entered at level 2 (or Novice).

So, this week, time for action stations!! Praying for some better weather, although I'm very grateful for my stable at present. Makes life a little easier!