So it has been ages since my last post... everything got in the way- life, work, laziness, etc. I also lost a little bit of focuse towards the end of our show season, so I cut it short and didn't even go to Regionals, although we had achieved our goal of qualifying and everything. I'm a little disappionted in myself, but ready to move on and get to next show season!
Our last show was in August at Silverwood and it was very hot and humid. Shelley had given us a very strenuous lesson on Thursday night and we went to Silverwood on Friday, where J was uncharacteristically tired and didn't have his normal "show off", big-chested attitude. I didn't work him long while schooling on Friday, hoping that he would recover by Saturday. We had two tests on Saturday and it felt like our hearts just weren't in it- we were both tired and didn't have much motivation. Our scores were low (compared to other scores from the season), but I really didn't feel bad about it, as I knew that we didn't try our hardest. I decided to scratch my class on Sunday, as J was still tired and I didn't want to push him and chance an injury. It wasn't the greatest show to end the season on, but I really felt that I had to take a break from the stress and pressure of showing. And with that, I took a month "off" of training with Shelley and just got back to enjoying my horse and spending quality time with him.
We got back into consistent training in October, and I immediately saw all the holes where I had let J (and myself) slide for that month off. Luckily J remembered a lot of it and once I became more diligent about riding him correctly again, he was back. So we are back to weekly lessons and J is doing really well. We are working the 2nd level movements and J seems to be handling the work well. Shelley rode him once while I was out of town, and taught him flying changes. For the next week, he was doing flying changes everywhere, even though I wasn't asking for them! At the last lesson, we really worked on moving his shoulder over and then asking his hind end to dramatically follow (like a turn on the forehand) in all three gaits. Once he was really responsive to my aids, I would add my outside aids, close up his outside hind and move into a shoulder-in or shoulder-fore. That exercise really helped a lot. Then Shelley rode him last week (as I was out of town for a work conference) and worked on flexion turns with him, so I've been doing both for this week and have my next lesson on Sunday.
I hope to get to the Fields and Fences winter series USDF shows this winter- they are scheduled for January and March- J has much more energy in the winter and if I can do those two shows, then I can do less shows in the heat of the summer and save him for Regionals. So that is the plan for now!
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