Tired...

Even Basse is tired!

I'm so so tired. Ever since mother's operation on her shoulder, I have been looking after the horses on my own, so morning stables on my own and riding 2-3 horses a day. And I'm not complaining, because I love my life with horses, and I would far rather work outside 10 hours a day with my lovely ponies than be stuck inside. Luckily mum and dad help out as much as they can, and mum is probably doing too much!

So tired that I sleep with my mouth open

All the horses have been good. Basse is working well for his riders, but we had our first falling off incident of the year when Basse spooked as a hells angels motorbike accelerated right next to our arena and it made a huge noise! I don't understand why they can't drive by slowly until they have some distance to our arena?

Nelli has been amazingly fun to ride. Whenever I ride her, we either go out for a hack round the woods and gallop pretty fast! Nelli really loves going fast, and I have to stay sharp and not relax because as soon as I chill, she will throw in a few sharp bucks to remind me to stay awake! Last week we also had a jumping day when this dressage rider managed to jump a massive 50cm (1ft8) Jumping every now and then reminds me of how much I would love to have a horse that I could properly practise with because jumping is just so much fun!

Nelli outside

Rama has been in such a great mood recently, he really is a summer horse. He is so happy when I ride him outdoors, and we have been able to practise a lot of half-pass and leg yields, which have improved  quite a bit. I also changed our warmup to have lots of transitions in it (walk-trot-walk → trot-canter-trot) and this has also paid off. Rama is starting to become a lot sharper and quicker thanks to the transitions, and I'm learning to ride him more with my core muscles + seat, and less with hand and leg aids. We were even able to practise three tempi changes, which were all clean and very bouncy! Yesterday I had a lesson with Ville (separate post to follow about it!) and he gave me so much to think about once again, and ideas on what to focus on in order to improve.

Vallu has again improved a little bit more. His left canter is starting to feel normal and good, and I have even managed to do two flying changes!!! I never thought that I would ever get to practise them again with him, and even though they were crazy, not in control, weird bouncy/explosion changes, they made me so happy. I'm hoping that sometime this week after a hard training session we could possibly go for a walk in the woods, but he has to be tired so that no crazy accidents happen.

Ewww mummy don't kiss me!