Dorothy!!

So there is a reason that i waited so long to post about this lesson which was about a week ago and the reason is this

                                                             

ok so i know i look like a turtle, but i was concentrating, and dumb-moment of the day award goes to me. Lesson learned?? never turn your horse out anywhere with tack on it gets really muddy.....really fast. My bestfriend wants to be a professinal photographer and wants to take  show photos for some extra money and was practising on me and india and i'm telling you right now india is a lot more photogenic than i am :)

So first lesson (outside) we worked on getting her to take longer, calmer steps and walked most of the time...oh well. However we did work on trot lengthenings and finally got one!!

the exercise that we did was in every corner and at E and B do a ten meter collected trot circle then inbetween circles ask for a lengthening. It works so well!! but when she explained it i was like "oh this will be easy" i stand corrected it was hard. after a while she started to anticipate the lengthening, if she started to anticipate it we just did another slower circle then she was alright. She was high as a kite that day, getting her to listen to my aids was really difficult.

Ok second lesson, she was very good this time and we worked on collecting and legthening again and lateral work. We worked on shoulder-in and leg yield, and indie gave me the best shoulder-in i've ever gotten. Also we had to share the arena with a bunch of western people that saw the part of the lesson where i was mostly walking, a couple of them decided to i guess show me up by cantering around with tie-downs. Dorothy looked over at them and started muttering about "ooh look i can canter with a tie-down i'm so fabulous"

Does anyone know the look people give you when they are thinking evil thoughts??

i do.

She told me to canter (without a tie-down) and had me lengthen the canter right under their noses and to do it big. Then to do some leg-yield and shallow loops. I swear the looks i got  were priceless they ranged from disbelief to humbled.

If any western people are reading this i would like to point out that we have tons of western people at my barn and i love most of them, but there are two groups that come that i really strongly dislike, the first group is the one that beats the shit out of their horses, the second one is really mean to anyone who rides english dressage or jumping. They have kicked us out of the arena even though they never rented it (which you have to do to kick people out) They almost run us over pretty routinely. However i will give them some credit this time they where polite most of the time (i think dorothy scared them)

In other news we are going to a show this weekend, i'm showing first one and two. And i'm so nervous, i'm really not sure why i can do the tests with no problem, indie's been to these showgrounds before and we won everything we could have won. I think it has something to do with sleep deprivation, its making me very emotional. For example i was reading over my tests and was about to the point of tears, and i really don't know why. Note to self sleep is very important, the earliest i have gone to bed the past like four days was one in the morning and i woke up at six every morning, its really killing me, i stayed home today (because i'm a wuss) and slept until 12, can i tell you how much better i feel.

Note to all concerned sleep, its good for you.