Arena hire success!

Wearing our HV Polo RAF blue set from Fur Feather Meds

Last Sunday we hired the indoor at a local yard (15 minute drive with the trailer) to get the boys out once again. It's really good for all of us (me, mum and the boys) to get out on a semi regular basis to ensure that loading, travelling and working at a different place isn't stressful and that it can be fun! So on a horribly windy and grey Sunday afternoon Rama and Vallu loaded we trundled off to the local yard. I was expecting the worst as the trailer park is right next to the road and it's a really open place so you really feel the wind! But to my absolute amazement, Vallu had suddenly turned into an old pro who just stood there whilst I took off his travel bandages and put on his saddle and my boots, whilst dad was helping mum tack up since Rama decided that standing still for even a second was nigh on impossible!

And as you can see in the backgrounds of the photos, the whole arena was filled with jumps which made riding a bit more difficult than anticipated because Vallu decided that every single jump was out to eat him alive and Rama tried to aim for every jump because he thought he was there for jump training! But once both boys relaxed a little bit, I actually had a great training session.

After doing a good long walk warm up, I did a lot of forwards, long and low canter all around the jumps just trying to go him to relax and to focus less on the jumps and more on me. We did have a couple of moments where I was glad I a double bridle on! But apart from that it didn't take too long for Vallu to settle, which was really nice :) Thanks to the jump course I ended up doing the weirdest diagonals with single flying changes followed by doing four and three tempis down the long side of the arena and I managed to actually count and not mess them up.

I also tried doing a trot-piaffe-trot transitions (or something like that!!) after reading online about how that is a great exercise for strengthening the horse's hind legs and creating better push from behind for the trot. Although the first few attempts were either Vallu piaffing until he stopped because he wouldn't let me ride him back into trot or then he quite literally just halted from trot when I was asking for piaffe... And then his legs were all over the place so we probably looked like Bambi on ice, but once we both kinda figured out what to do I think there were a few successful attempts! Not bad for blind leading the blind ♥︎