so many updates to come!

Hope everyone had a wonderful New Years!! I'm still super far behind in all things blog-related, including responding to everyone's comments - so sorry about that! I'm reading everything, I promise, but just have not had a chance yet to reply. Hopefully that will happen in the next few days! I will also hopefully get caught up on everyone's posts soon too... soon!!

'does this cooler make my butt look big?!?' - isabel

In the meantime tho, here's a little preview of what's been going on with us over the last couple weeks. And brace yourself - it's a whole bunch of stuff!! All with posts to come!

fiercest, most expressive canter transition EVAR

For instance, we finally returned to our regularly scheduled lesson program, with mixed results. Isabel and I have been a bit out of sync on the flat since getting back into work, and it definitely showed in this lesson. Nothing awful, but it meant that when we met our first fences together since October, things were a little hit-or-miss.

soupy arena footing = nbd

We had some redemption tho schooling at home over this simple figure eight exercise (exactly the same as a lesson at OF last year, and that Boyd Martin used in his recent clinic). From the camera's perspective, jump the far blue and white vertical off the rail on the left lead heading away from the camera, land and turn right to catch the closer blue and yellow vertical on the right lead, land and turn left back to the fence and repeat until horse is nicely in rhythm and landing the leads. 

And guess what? It took about 3 reps for Izzy before she nailed it. Good mare!

'yea, I'm pretty much the best' - isabel

We also had a little redemption on the flat wherein we spent 30 solid minutes working on stretching at the walk and trot using the methods taught to us by bio-mechanics clinician Kirsten Nelson (and written about here). It honestly felt like hitting the 'reset' button, and we were rewarded for the efforts in a recent lesson with dressage trainer C at TM, where Isabel and I finally clicked back together and actually made a couple breakthroughs too. 

gettin back in sync!

I also managed to switch back to driving my normal daily driver car (hadn't been able to operate the clutch since breaking my leg) rather than driving my truck everywhere. And the switch was highly reminiscent of switching between two dearly beloved horses haha - I'll let you try and figure out which two I mean, and which horse refers to which vehicle (virtual cookies if you get it lol). 

More thoughts to come on that and how it's changed my riding. And also how differing expectations and standards and mental spaces have been brought to light by these two horses as well. Funny how something as simple as an attitude adjustment is all it takes to completely change the outcome of a ride...

And generally, more updates to come on Bali as well. 

'what is expectations?' - bali

Plus there was a super awesome group trail ride - and even more virtual cookies to anyone who can name any of the horses and riders in the following pic (+5 for each correct guess lol).

that's a lot of chestnuts!

Anyway, that's a quick preview of all sorts of fun posts to come. Hopefully I can get them all written soon!! Enjoy the weekend !!