Waihou Dressage - 12.03.2011

OK; time to put into practice our Shorter warm up, to see if it helps.
Having lost a lot of confidence in the fall, I also really needed to have an outing.

However, having lost a lot of confidence was the prime opportunity for the Big pony to exercise his sense of humour = NOT appreciated.

He was quite tense and on edge, and having timed it for about a twenty minute warm up, I arrived at the warm up area to find the ring was running well ahead of time with the rider before me already in and doing her test. I then dropped my back number so had to scramble to get it tied on. And onto our WALK around the arena....eyeballs sticking out at every opportunity!

The test was not much better, with a leap and bound and skedaddle across the arena, with me fearing us jumping out, and worrying about stopping. The rest of the test was pretty dreadful with him laughing at me the whole time and me riding by the seat of my pants.

But my goodness was he pleased with himself when he waltzed out of the arena, and thought he would march back to the truck. I knew then that the little blighter had been playing on my nerves! Yeah; huge joke - NOT.

After about ten minutes of working him at walk long and low and a relaxing stand under the trees, I gave him his final warm up just as the horse before was in the arena. What a different horse...he felt light soft and obedient.

We proceded to trot around the arena, and then the bell went for us to start our test. As luck would have it, at that moment a horse did a huge noisy scramble up a truck ramp....just the excuse he needed to do a monster skedaddle with head in the air, and leap about....I promptly lost my stirrups and had the fleeting thought that my still injured body really couldnt cope with another fall from that height.

Managed to halt, with the giraffe head up and eyes on stalks.

OK, time for positive action: we had a dressage test to do. Pushed him up together, told him to get on with the job, and he did!

Slightly tense throughout the test, but a completely different and rideable horse compared to the first test. - which again goes to show that he plays on my weaknesses and thinks it is a huge joke. Now to work on ignoring his antics in the future.