Just Kidding.....

Short short post today

soooo about that show its not gonna happen because i can't wear a helmet for another about four days, because on tuesday i feinted and fell and busted my head open on a door jam so that morning we spent an amazing two hours in the emergency room getting my head stitched back together.....joy.

The best part is though, i don't have black stitches, i have green stitches. be jealous. be very jealous.

Blog Award

Wow i got the beautiful blogger award from confessions of a struggling dressage rider, can i just say thank you so much!!

So seven things about me

1: my theme song is All the single ladies, for a reason, i'm single and proud

2: i got india for christmas, big red bow and everything (thanks mom and dad)

3: I used to own a dressage farm, it wasn't fancy but i loved it.

4: i love music, and i listen to a bunch of random songs, i don't have a genre

5: i have a wintec isabel and i love it, me and my mom fight over which one of our saddles is better, don't tell her, but mine wins hands down

6: My favorite drink is dr. pepper

7: one of my nicknames is pinto bean, and my best friend's is soy bean, because we're cool like that :)

ok now i'm gonna give this award to some pretty amazing people 

Foxypants (because this chick is hilarious) 

Saving Faith

Spidersweb

A day in the Life

Grand Prix Someday 

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.

Dentist!!!

The horsey dentist came to see indie because she was long overdue. Apparently (as i'm told because i've been sick all week) They had to sedate her big time. Like walking around like a drunken sailor. And as some of you know none of our horses can see the horsey dentist without something going wrong, Roxi sees the dentist tries to throw him against the wall after being sedated, Romanche sees the dentist has to be snubbed to a tree because he thinks the dentist will try and pick ticks out of his ears, baron sees the dentist and tries to kill him, Rosetta was the only good one, but Rosettas perfect, because duh!! she's Rosetta!!
So this time india being the drunken wench that she is bit her tongue and it was bleeding all over the place. As i understand it my mom the nurse was calmer than the dentist, oh great!!
The dentist found some nasty spurs and points on her teeth and she had some ulcers. And now her mouth is all owchie so no riding until friday (which doesn't bother me since i've been sick)
BUT.... that only leaves two days of practice before Dorothy comes back!!, which is good and bad

Good: dorothy's coming!!!
Bad: crap she's gonna yell at me for not practising when i did!! 

so yes this is my life....

but on another good note before all this crap happened, awesome trainer had me start working on collected stuffs Yeah!!!
and i jumped my first whole baby course on india and passed my D2 (i know i'm way behind but its hard when i had my first official jumping lesson the day i did my first whole baby course, cut me some slack over here!!)

now i shall put some real people cloths on, retreat to my living room with dressage day and try to get better.......joy

What Indie loves is.....

So i was inspired by fugly horse of the day to really take a look at what india loves to do. So i have compiled this list of stuff indie loves to do for your viewing pleasure. :)

Eating: number one OMG!!! food=life (we all saw that one coming)

Running: she loves running, like tearin up the arena or field kind of running

Jumping: if i wasn't addicted to dressage indie would be a fabulous showjumper, she is fast and jumps really high for a being 14 hands
(thats a really bad picture, but whatevs)

stretching: she loves to stretch all the time

Un-tying knots: she is the master of knots

Being a camera whore: she secretly loves the camera :)

*Facepalm*

Okay i'm an idiot. About half-way through the lesson with Dorothy i realized that i had left my camera sitting contently on the dash of my car.

Face, meet Wall. Wall, meet Face.

.......

But i did have a great lesson with Dorothy :)
I asked her about showing first level test 1 and 2 (about time i go to first level)
She asked about lengthenings, to which i replied "well......ummmm........did you bring a magnifying glass?"

She told me that lengthenings are the reason that most people don't move on to first level (guilty!!) and that its just one movement, you just have to make up for it elsewhere. She also said that at first level judges aren't really looking for a true legit one, what they want to see is the mechanics of the movement. What she said to do was to do baby steps (prolonged half-halt) then do big steps where the lengthening would be, when you get to the other side do baby steps again. Apparently most horses that don't have a natural lengthening *cough india cough* don't show a very big lengthening until about second level, which made me feel a lot better.
For the show in March i'm gonna do First level!!

Alright so the lesson, we worked on getting indie more responsive to my "WHOA DAMMIT!!" aids. We accomplished this amazing feat by doing transitions.......for two hours. I'm tellin ya when you pay Dorothy 90 bucks you get your moneys worth. Towards the end all i was thinking was "please Indie please stop!!! my half-halt aids are broken!!! and your not responding to telepathy!!!"
But by the middle of the lesson indie was stoppin like a champ!!

Dorothy sentenced us to four days of this "walk, halt, trot, halt, walk, trot, trot bigger, halt, baby trot, walk, halt, rein-back, trot, big trot.......well you get it" and no canter until i think slow down and she is slamming on the brakes. Dorothy said this exercise was the very beginning of collected work, and damn i can see why. Without absolute control of the horses speed collection ain't happin.
Dorothy also said that second level should be no problem for indie because she is built for the more collected movements, its those pesky extended ones we'll have trouble with. But again those are only one movement and we will make it up in the collected ones.

Now for one of the coolest parts of the lessons i was taking a much needed walk break and two girls that are notorious for having horses that won't stop for anything came over and said that they wanted to be able to stop their horses off of their seats like i was doing, and they thought i was useless because i don't jump high. ;)

DOROTHY!!!!!! :D

Dorothy is coming this sunday!! Last time i rode with her was almost a 6 months ago. Me and Indie have improved so much since then, i think she will be very impressed. Last time i rode with her we were working on getting Indies head out of the atmospere and tracking up. Now we are working on hauches-in. i'm really really excited!! One thing that i have been looking forward to for about a year since i went to the mary wanless clinic and rode with dorothy is showing everyone that me and my little mare can be successful at this whole dressage thing. We can do it, so don't count us out before we start. I think i proved that to the local show-goers last show i went to when we blew everyone else out of the water. Now then, one down two to go.

so i have posted pictures of (in order)

last Dorothy lesson

last Mary Wanless Clinic

So in the first one i look good Indie is another story, and in the second Indie looks good and i am another story. After sunday i'll post the Dorothy before and after pictures and hopefully there will be a big difference.