Friday 12th September

Well the last few days the weather has been horrible so I haven’t been able to do anything with Blossom. Today I was heading off to Northern Ireland for the Celtic Pairs and Individuals Competition and I was taking Blossom with me. I didn’t intend to compete Blossom this year but my sisters pony has started head shaking so she was going to be riding Gee – Whizz. So instead of borrowing a pony over there to ride for the weekend I decided I may as well take Blossom and see how she goes and seen as Saturday was the individuals there was going to be no pressure on either off us, so if I felt it was getting too much for her I could just stop or pull her from the competition.

It took Blossom about 20 minutes to load, she really isn’t sure about this new lorry. But once she was in she stood happily next to Whizz and started eating her haylage. She travelled really well, it total I think it was around a 6 hour journey.

When we arrived I unloaded the ponies and then sent my sister a walk with them to stretch their legs out while I built the corrals for them. After letting Blossom settle in her corral for just over an hour I decided to take her out to play. I went into the main arena where we were going to be riding to make sure she had no thresholds. We played with lots of friendly while moseying around the arena, then went on to play porcupine HQ and FQ. I then played with yo yo, she was really good at this today and had a really good draw. Circling game was next, again everything went really well so I added in some transitions and all went really well. We then played with sideways without a fence up the middle of the arena, she needed a few corrections but I was still happy with this.

I then decided to play stick to me, but playing stick to me on a 22ft line wasn’t going too well as I was just getting tangled up all the time. So I asked my mum to go and get my 12ft line from the lorry, but I got bored standing around waiting for her so decided to give it a go at liberty (halter still on) The arena did have a rope around it so I knew if she did leave me she could go very far and would be safe. Blossom was brilliant and stuck to me wherever I went and at whatever pace I went at. It felt really good!! I didn’t want to do too much of stick to me with her as she does tend to get bored if that’s all we do. So I attached the 12ft line and made it into reins and jumped on bareback. I wasn’t sure how this would go, but she was so soft and responsive!! Most of the time all I had do was think what I wanted to do and she would respond, walk, trot and back – up all went really well. I done lots of follow the rail and used the posts around the arena as places to do transitions; it was good as it really gave me a focus too. We also played with circles using a bending pole to circle round. It felt amazing that only my focus on the pole kept us on the circle.

It was starting to get dark and the boys had just returned from getting us all pizza for dinner so I thought I should finish for the night. So I jumped off and finished with a little bit of stick to me and again played with it at liberty. She was really good and I ended up having a little audience watching us, and got a few really nice comments from some of the Irish guys about good it looked!