I can imagine all of us are breathing a sigh of relief that Winter finally seems to have decided to leave us. I am loving the sight of naked horses in the field, and lighter evenings. Hopefully, all of those rotten bugs that seem to have attacked most of us will be on their way too.

Eeyore and I set some goals for the coming year, I just maybe didn’t tell him! Our aim to affiliate, to qualify for the area festivals, at Prelim Bronze and Novice Bronze, and to maybe go out and do an unaffiliated Elementary. I bought myself a lovely Leroy and Bongo planner in Pink, and duly wrote down my goals; apparently this makes it more likely they are achieved. I am hoping my partner in crime will be with me on this. What do you all do to keep on track?

Step one in my plan was to go and have a lesson with Sam Turner. I think everyone who believes Cobs can, are currently enthralled by the journey that Sam has taken with her gorgeous boy Billy Whizz. I was more than a little intimidated by the idea of exposing my wonky bod to a Mary Wanless pupil, but do you know what… Sam Turner is just awesome. She immediately put both of us at ease, and explained that some of my issue was down to maybe my own feeling of inadequacy as a height impaired, ummm, maybe not a size zero rider, trying my best to look tall and elegant, and therefore ending up with riding with a stiff back. The difference in one session for Eeyore, his length of neck, softness and stride was amazing. I will be back! I enjoy clinics and lessons with different people, sometimes it just takes something explained in a slightly different way, and it just goes click in my head.  Talking of which…  How many of us struggle to learn one dressage test let alone two…

scribbling on paper, using an app, or one of these new fangled but very clever speaker watches? In my caserunning around our stable yard in full attire much to the amusement of fellow liveries and the horses. The YouTube video says it all…. yup I am bonkers and the owner of an Eeyore what does one expect,

 

 

So where are we up to with our goals thus far. We took the plunge, and Eeyore is now officially Mister Bo Spangle, registered with BD. We have managed to better our Prelim scores on each outing, and have enough qualifying sheets for an area festival first round, Bronze section. We have even done a couple of novices and got some points. There have been some hilarious nearly come a cropper moments, with Eeyore suffering from first time at new venue itis, where there are clearly Clydesdale eating dragons. I loved a recent post on British dressage which encouraged a raft of giraffes pretending to be horses photos, which made me smile and add my contribution which you can see. It doesn’t always go as we would hope. The key is how we deal, move on, and work out how to do it all over again a little bit better.