Sunshine and success

Yesterday was the first properly warm spring day, I was very tempted to ride outdoors with just a t-shirt on. Because both the indoor arenas were fully booked up until late into the night, I decided to put on my big girl pants and rode outdoors... And what a great idea that was.

Outdoor arena and sunshine :)

Because neither one of us is normally very happy on the big outdoor arena, I always try to avoid it the best I can (bad rider I know!) but since the weather was SO lovely, I was feeling pretty optimistic and Vallu felt so relaxed.

After a good ten minutes of walking about with LONG reins and with absolutely no spooking happening I decided to start working on the trot. Once again, no problems and at this point I was already over the moon!!! Normally as soon as I ask for something more than walk Vallu starts messing about and he totally loses his focus on me. Even with arena eventing practise jumping happening in the other indoor/outdoor arenas, Vallu managed to keep his attention on me.

As everything was going well, I decided to start working on the homework that Andrew had given us during last Thursday's lesson, and that was canter to trot transitions. Sounds simple enough yes, but boy can they be difficult to get perfect! I either hold on too much and Vallu does a canter walk transition of then then I don't do enough and Vallu just stays in canter and ends up doing some very nice collected canter!! :D With some very clear and consistently used aids, we managed to get there in the end on Thursday, so we picked up from where we left off. It seems like we both remembered immediately how to do them! Breathe out, soften outside rein, half halt, and immediately once Vallu moves down to trot, asking for a bit more forwards so that we get a big trot straight away.

Vallu loving the sunshine

We'd only been working for 30 minutes by this point (including ten minute walk) so I thought we needed to do some more work, considering the fact that Vallu has had 5 days of easy work and lots of hacking out. So I decided to do another exercise that Andrew made us do last Thursday, which was transitions within a pace, and this time it was canter; so we did transitions between working canter and extended canter on a big 20m circle. It was great to finally be brave enough to be able to push Vallu to go properly forwards even when we are working outdoors!

I managed to get a huge breakthrough in my own head. When I keep myself and Vallu busy with work and different and difficult exercises, then no spooks happen!! It's so obvious but I think it needs to happen first before you can believe in it...

First solo hack!

Obviously my first day back in Nottingham after my weekend home means that I'm going to be crazy brave, and decided to take Vallu out for a hack by myself. It went quite well, we only got about ⅓ of the way of our normal route but since we managed to survive heavy traffic, I decided to turn back before it ended badly. Coming back up the big hill, we got overtaken by two cars, followed by a van and then a lorry, then a bike and then finally a motorbike...  Fun times! 

I think we will stick to hacking out with other people, but it's great to know that we can survive by ourselves. The bridle path will hopefully become dry soon so that we can start hacking out there instead of the village.

Horse selfie :D

Tired horse hugs!

Finland

I've spent this weekend in Finland having a moment of calm before the big move back here. It really has been lovely to see all the horses, who are all looking great! I got to ride Rama on Saturday, and he was amazing - everything was easy like usual with him. I also got to see nearly all of our horsey friends, and it was great to catch up with everyone. 

Baby B selfie ♥

My friends have been bombarded with tons snapchats of our dogs. I can't believe how I've managed to not live with them for so long, I love them so much. Toivo is such good boy, he follows you all the time and never leaves your side when you're outside. Niilo isn't so good ;) he nearly always goes off on an adventure and ends up giving you a heart attack every ten minutes when you can't find him...

Tired stable cat ;)

I'm now off to pack and get myself to the airport, I'm flying back to Heathrow today and should be back in Nottingham in the evening! I'm super excited to see Vallu tomorrow, he's been such a good boy apparently, and I bet he has loved his little mini-holiday :)

Change of plans

Once again it's been proven that you never really know what life is going to throw at you... Last week we found out that mum has hurt her other arm so badly that she needs to have surgery on it as soon as possible. This means that at the end of this month Vallu and I will move back to Finland for the summer, so that I can look after our horses back home and that mum can have her surgery asap and start recovering.

Check out the scary tractor making lots of noise in the background - Vallu didn't spook at all

In a way I'm really disappointed that I won't be able to compete over the summer like planed with Vallu, but family is far more important and I do think Vallu will be very happy back at home with all our other horses! Maybe we can try to do a couple of competitions back home? ;) It will be lovely to be able to ride all of our horses, I've missed Basse terribly. And my parents. And Nelli and Rama; and the dogs and our cat. Finland summer 2014 ♥

Vallu on our first spring sunshine hack on Saturday! ❤️

Casper with Vallu posing in the background :D

Gorgeous pony!

A good friend has her small horse/pony for sale and we decided to take some photos of Casper! Casper is 6 years old, about 15.1hh and a true gem for someone looking for an all round small horse. Brave as anything, he always tries his heart out and super quick to learn. Can do hunting, show jumping, arena eventing, dressage and hacking out in company; he's good at everything. If anyone is looking for an absolute star of a little pony/horse please share this post and please get in contact with me through here or on email. Thank you!