Chiropractor visit

Over the weekend we had our chiropractor come to check all of the horses to ensure that they are all feeling as good as possible since the weather has turned horrible and we now have half-melted-snow-thats-turned-to-ice everywhere. None of the horses are particularly happy about being turned out in icy paddocks, but luckily they are feeling alright - a few spots of ‘tension’ here and there but nothing terrible - thank god!

Trends to watch out for: euro-star SS17

FINALLY we are getting to see sneak pics of what the SS17 collections will look like! I'm so excited, because I love bright colours spring/summer collections are a lot more my style than the AW collections.

Euro-star have released a look book of their SS17 collection and I did a mini happy dance when I saw it! And there's a good reason for that because at last someone has used purple 💜 💜 💜 Ever since Eskadron released blackberry in their AW13 collection, I think the matchy world has been begging for someone to release another purple and now euro-star have! YAY!

It's all just so emotional

Like I wrote on my instagram yesterday, you'd think that after nearly 5 years I would have figured Vallu out by now, but no not yet...  🙄 🤔 Vallu apparently will never fail to keep me grounded and continuously learning about riding and owning horses. And the lesson that I learnt last week? That he is incredibly sensitive to my emotions (good and bad) which means I need to work a lot harder on making sure I only bring my A game to every ride so that he never has to feel me being tense or worried. I read somewhere a few weeks ago that horsemanship is about thinking and that horsemanship is about understanding and seeing things from a horse's point of view. Well I've certainly learnt to see things from his point of view!

"Perhaps a more confident rider, who notices the horse is nervous, is able to control his or her own tension or nervousness."

Progress

On the last day of my winter break whilst I was riding Basse I suddenly thought about how much this horse has progressed in his rehab. We got the clear ahead to start doing trot work in mid October and although he is still not perfect, now only a few months later he is doing a lot better than most people expected 👍🏻

We have good trot on the left rein (bad rein) and a better trot on the right rein. Basse is able to do shoulder in and leg yields in walk and trot, he can trot 12m circles without struggling and we have a very nice right canter. That has all been achieved in 3 months! Okay so our left canter is a bit wild and some days I feel like I’m riding a just broken in baby horse who doesn’t know where his legs are meant to go, but overall I have a happy and sound horse who enjoys his work!

4 year blogiversary

My little blog is now FOUR years old! 🎁🎈🎊 🎉 How quickly does time go? This is my 450th post and I'm so glad I decided to start blogging all those years ago. I've gained some fantastic friends, been given great opportunities to review products and most importantly, I will have memories and photos of my horses forever. I find it so freeing to be able to write down what has happened and how I was feeling etc so that I'll be able to look back on everything that has happened. 

A massive thank you to everyone who reads this blog and especially to those of you who take time to comment, it means a lot! Hopefully we will have a very exciting and busy 2017 ❤️❤️❤️

Dressage training: Just think more rationally

On Thursday I had one of the most motivating and inspiring lessons that I've had ever since leaving the UK and my lessons with Lili from Brooksby Dressage. Sometimes it just takes a while to find to someone you can connect with and suits both you and your horse and I was quite bitter about having to stop my lessons with Lili when I moved back to Finland as she (like Andrew Fletcher before her) understood both Vallu and I. On top of this, ever since Vallu's injury I've been utterly paranoid about having lessons because I'm worried that a new trainer won't understand that he needs/I want to give Vallu lots of walk breaks when working so there is the smallest possible chance he hurts himself again.

I've been lunging Vallu over poles once a week for well over a  month now because I realised how absolutely bored he was with his normal lunging session. He put zero effort in until he saw he had to get his little hooves over the poles after which I built them up to tiny jumps and I now have a very happy horse whenever he realises he's being lunged. Despite this, I've not wanted to do pole work when riding on my own because I've felt very insecure and worried that I would mess up and somehow Vallu would end up hurting himself (see how my brain works now? #eternallyworrying) So you can image how much I was panicking for agreeing to a pole work lesson with M (I won't share her name because I'm not sure if she wants to be named on my blog!)

Prolite dressage girth review

For what feels like the longest time, I've been looking at different ways to improve Vallu's comfort when riding him. I've blogged several times about how much I love the WOW saddles and how totally I believe in them being one of the most comfortable saddles for horses for many reasons such as the Flair Flocking System where the panels of the saddle are filled with air which has been proven by pressure testing to be the best out there. WOW's also have the biggest range of changeable head plates as most saddle manufacturers will only supply trees with angles from 80 degrees (narrow) to 110 degrees (extra wide) whilst WOW has a range of 73 to 143 degrees - the list goes on! This saddle has been a godsend for a sensitive creature like Vallu, but I've felt like there's been something missing to help his comfort even more  🤔 I even got Jins last summer in the hope that they would help me keep my heels down and get my legs to be more still (and they have helped with this!) to ensure that I don't affect him as much.

But even after all of these, I felt like there was something missing and I ended up doing quite a bit of research on different girths by plenty of different brands and talking to a few good equestrian friends. I ended up going for a Prolite dressage girth that is manufactured under license from Fairfax Saddles Ltd's intellectual property rights.

New year, new goals?

Oh wow.

Those are the only words that come into my mind that adequately describe the shock that it's now actually already 4 days into January 2017 and woahhh Christmas is over, although it has been so nice to have a long break from blogging! Although I spent most of Christmas on the sofa thanks to a horrible flu, I was still able to see all of my family and spend Christmas Eve just chilling and spending quality time with the best people ❤️ Due to my flu, both the boys had several days off and Basse somehow ended up having a week off(!!) after which he has come back better than ever!