Solo Schooling

First up I found two photos on my phone and are the most recent ones I have of Miss Kika despite them being taken in the evening and as such aren't of great quality due them being snapped on my phone...as always!
Of course this evening, when I had a perfect photo opportunity to catch Kika making her funny water drinking face my phone battery was too low to snap some pics! Sad Times! :-(
She is hilarious after drinking water and of course I don't catch her at this often enough!
But when she's finished drinking she holds a mouthful of water in her gob for a few minutes before swallowing it - however this can only be achieved with a teensy tiny bit of her tongue sticking out!
Hahaha - I find it hilarious and must catch her on camera some day!

Anyways before I wax lyrical & get all waffly about our schooling session yesterday I'll post the first photo - both images were taken on the 14th of August 2012.

Coat is getting better in this shot - although may be too far away to really be able to tell...

As title suggests I undertook a bit of solo schooling last night following on from Wednesday's nervy jumping lesson - I still haven't figured out what had my stomach in knots! I was also conscious of applying the tips given to me by L in our Monday lesson - however yesterday I rode without spurs & in my GP saddle as the girth of the Dressage saddle has been rubbing herself so going to go shopping tomorrow for a sheepskin girth sleeve (amongst other things ... my fingers are sneaking out through my gloves and Fatty McFattypants needs more muesli ;-) )

We rode in the main arena (Image LINK from yard website) which has mirrors along the whole of the back wall (short side of the arena).
So I could try to keep an eye on what we were doing, where my lower legs were and whether I was on the right diagonal when trotting - I am woefully bad at feeling that and need to see it in the mirror to know whether I am right or wrong! *shame-faced*
There was another rider in the arena with us who was getting a lesson from the RI, nothing against this rider as she is a lovely lady and a great rider but she is very difficult to share an arena with. You never know which way she is going or whether she's riding a circle, changing rein or doing lateral work - the most difficult thing is that once she's riding her line she sticks to it and will ride through you if you accidently wander across her path - makes for some stop-start riding from me...but Kika and I coped and we managed not to lose the rag with each other.

I kept L's lesson on Monday in mind and tried to stick to the inside track - which helped me keep out of the other riders way...well until she started her lateral work which unfortunately coincided with my attempts to canter circles - and if you've been following the blog for a while you'll know that Kika and I have trouble with canter at times (ahem - often).
Despite all this the Solo Schooling adventure was far from carnage - it wasn't perfect but it was happily middle of the road and in keeping with how we've been working of late, so I was very happy with how we got on.
Our "bad" rein canter strike offs which we'd finished Monday's lesson working on were considerably less miss and more hit then they have been of late - Kika retained her lesson from Monday's spin under L.

I finished up a very happy bunny and ended up lungeing herself in the pessoa in the outdoor this evening for a change of pace and because I had to have my Yellow Fever Injection ahead of next months holiday to South America with my mother.

I always think her very pony-esque when i see photos of her from this angle

As always thanks for reading if you've gotten this far - hopefully the photos made all the writing and waffle easier to digest. Must remember to try and get better pics tomorrow - not sure whether I'll be going for a hack in the woods or attempting to better our schooling attempts...all will depend on how day pans out.

I'm going to try and get back into updating this more regularly again as otherwise I'll lose track of what we get up to - which is the main idea behind keeping this blog...combatting my woeful memory by writing down our adventures. Well that and keeping friends who i don't see of speak to very often up to speed with Miss Kika & myself!

Have a great weekend!