Thursday 25th September

Tonight was another good night!

We started tonight after lots of friendly with sideways around the round pen. I thought I should play this game first as I’m always forgetting about it and it’s the game that needs the most work. I had to go round the pen about 5 times to start with until Blossom softened and started going sideways without brace. The other direction was about the same so I just kept playing with it until she understood what she was expected to do. The last one we did it only took about three steps before she relaxed so I stop on that.

Next was circles, today was much better. We worked on pretty much the same as normal and everything went well, we even got another change of direction!!

We then played with a few obstacles before heading down the field to saddle. I had place the saddle between the round pen and the trailer as tonight I wanted to spend some time sending her out and around to find the saddle. Blossom didn’t quite understand that it was the saddle I was sending her too, as she kept running off and trying to get in the trailer – The ramp wasn’t even open! After running into the ramp about 5 times she worked out maybe she was meant to be looking for something else and then found the saddle and pad. She relaxed next to them and even had a little nibble of the theraflex pad. I asked her to do this several times and she was getting better every time and needed less help to find the saddle.

My Dad then came out and wanted to see this trailer loading I won’t shut-up about. So I dropped the back ramp and asked Blossom from about 22ft away to go in and she done me proud and trotted straight in. She actually went in so fast the trailer moved forward a little and still she went in happily!! Think Il need to start attaching the car to it again.

I then saddled, which didn’t go great but the beasties were really annoying her tonight which I think was the problem!
I then followed the rail in the round pen in walk and trot and then moved on to passenger lessons at trot and canter – Everything went really well tonight.

We the headed up the field to the poles to work with our figure of eight pattern, she was quite good tonight. She wasn’t quite as soft as the night before, but think that might have had something to do with Shady galloping about the field for some reason and then having a roll in the middle of our pattern!!

I didn’t want to wind Blossom up anymore so decided just to finish with walking the pattern a few times then finished. Again tonight she was great up at the stables and seems to look forward to coming up to get her groom and feed.