Winning Prelim Pony in the making!

Alright, so the past two days hav been pretty great. I love it here. I love all the people at this barn. Martha rocks. My horse rocks. The weather has been beautiful..

We had our third dressage lesson yesterday. It went really well. Our canter departs were GREAT! Our new cue for the canter is to be on the circle, have our bend, outside sits back, cue with the inside leg at the girth. We were doing figure eights at the canter with simple lead changes in the middle like it was a piece of cake. We did some walk work also. We have been walking too slow and sluggishly. We worked on having a big walk with lots of movement and swagger. We did more "big" trot work also, and started on our extended trot across the diagonal, which felt pretty cool! And his head was fantastic yesterday, too. Everything was just really starting to come together. Whereas before it seemed sort of like oh man this is going to be a project, the few tweaks Martha made resulting in things just falling into place and opening us up to advancing by leaps and bounds! We were really happy, she commented on Hickory's good work ethic. She's a genious. And as I was walking Hickory back to his barn she drove by in her car and stopped to say, "I am just really pleased with the progress you are making!" And I had dinner upstairs last night, which was fun. We talked about horses, and Martha told me some about Lauren's career and horse, and we talked about this organized trail ride put on by the local Hunt Club and she said I have the perfect horse for hunting and if I took him everyone would be trying to buy him from me. Not for sale!!!! Oh oh and we also planned out my show schedule: July 24--> Flying Cross Big Mini Trial, July 31-Aug 1--> Leg Up Horse Trials in Indiana, Aug 20-22-->Flying Cross Horse Trial, and possibly a dressage clinic thrown in there, too. So it was a great day!



Today was a good day, too. I held horses for another one of the farriers. Everyone here thinks I'm 17. I have to keep explaining that I'm 20. I rode Mr. Incredible, well more walked him around really. It was interesting. He has the violent head shaking habit when you go to put his halter or bridle on that is pretty annoying and slightly dangerous, he shakes that head HARD and FAST. And then I had a jumping lesson. It didn't go as poorly as I thought it would. We had some lead issues that we needed to work through, mainly they were coming from me not asking him following the plan we set up in dressage. And I had to pop him once with my whip because I would keep asking him to canter and he would sort of pick it up but he wouldn't MOVE OUT, again like in dressage before, the same concept. We have to work on applying that same concept to asking for the canter when we are jumping. He was being really fussy on the circle and not taking his lead when he really did know better, was wanting to fall out to the left towards the gate and I popped him and he did a HUGE buck and I was like 'woah! haven't felt that one before!' And Martha said that's because you didn't correct him before because when you correct him you create this monster that charges around or bucks and you haven't wanted to do that. But it needs to be done, he needs to be corrected so he can learn what these signals mean, and so we ARE going to create this monster sometimes but its necessary and we're going to also have the means to get the monster under control. So, it's been fun working through these issues, like seeing things get really messy and have Hickory charge around or buck but then start to LEARN and have things fall into place so well and have him behave and give the right response every single time. We worked on setting up for the jump, getting the correct canter, rebalancing. I don't really have the hang of it yet, I'm not sure what canter we need or how to get it. But Martha did the work, she yelled "Now gallop! Now halt!" And I was like 'wha.. ok.." And halted out of our gallop. And then she said "Now gallop!" And we galloped and then she said "Now halt! GALLOP!" And as I was pulling him down from the gallop to what would have been a halt he completely rebalanced and I would ask him to GOOOO as soon as he rebalanced, before he came to halt. It was really cool, kind of like hopping up and down in one place for a second or two. It was a hard lesson and I'm still a little lost, but I think it was a lot like our first dressage lesson, in the next few days some things should start falling into place. Martha was impressed with him, though, I think. She said he was a heck of a horse and if we could get this stuff down we were going Prelim cause this boy can JUMP! I was happy! And I think Hick really enjoyed himself, too. And as she drove off she said, "It's Hickory! Winning Prelim pony! Now we're upping the anty!!" I always thought he could go training, but I'm excited that Martha thinks we, as a pair, can go Prelim, cause I think prelim is a big deal!

Now if only the stupid MCAT doesn't ruin all this for me..