Saturday 13th September

Today I got up nice and early and cleaned out Blossom corral and gave her a groom before going into the lorry for a cup of tea. As usual in Ireland everything was running late and some people were still in bed drunk!
So I made the most of this and went out and had a great play session all around the field where we were parked in. Again I couldn’t have asked for a better play session she was just so focused on me it was brilliant. We started with having a little warm up using all seven games – everything went well. So we moved on and played with some trees, the side of the arena, cow poo, and a little stream.

By this time the juniors were riding so we stood and watched them for about 5 minutes, then headed back to the coral to get saddled. Once she was girthed in 3 stages I jumped on and just sat on her while we watched the last few races the juniors had left.

We then headed into the arena and played with follow the rail, using lots of transitions and change of direction. She wasn’t as calm as she was the night before but still better than the Blossom that I had before Parelli!

We didn’t have a good morning in the competition – Blossom got herself all excited and wasn’t really listening to me. So I stopped a few times during races and tried just to settle her and get her focused on me again. By the end of the session she was going much better and was able to do a steady canter up the ring, so I was pleased at that.

The afternoon session was much better, she stayed calm and listened to me the whole time during the races. She was able to walk into the start line and then stand on the line and wait for the flag to go down. And once the flag did go down she didn’t take off up the arena, she stayed in a steady pace and slowed down when I needed her too. Vaulting races didn’t go very well as she didn’t run for a vault in the right direction, but I haven’t asked her to do this since starting parelli so really didn’t expect her to run. But the good thing was she did respect my space on the ground, where as before she used to run over the top of me – so massive improvement!!

Overall we came 2nd last in the competition, we weren’t there to win it was just good to get her out and im happy with how she went.