Welcome Weekend

First of all - I actually did manage to remember to snap what I hope are some "reward pics" for those of you who persevere and read my blog offerings!

All taken yesterday (Saturday 15/9/2012) as Miss Kika sunbathed after a brief encounter with the house where she sweated under the girth, explains dark patches!

We actually had a gorgeous weekend weather-wise, considering how grey and cold the week ended!
L and I managed to get out for a lovely hour and a half hack on Saturday with her two dogs. We took a slightly different route to normal which included some nice hill work to strengthen Miss Kika's backside in the hopes of someday coaxing her into using it! ;-)
We did loads of walking, some trotting and some nice and calm cantering. This is our third woods outing this "summer" (I know it's September but weather was so nice it still felt like summer this weekend) and it was our best to date. There was still some spooking and jelly-legging at piles of logs, but we had no stock-still stopping or spinning, so progress was evident - but whether this means the next outing will be as successful will be anyone's guess.
Therein lies the beauty of horses - living, breathing, thinking animals and always up to some form of mischief...or maybe that's just my madam :p

"I don't like posing ... but I can do coy!"

I decided to try to tackle some pole work with Miss Kika today, to change things up a bit. Thinking back upon our spin now as I write this post I am not entirely sure how to feel about the experience really....
There was no misbehaving and all the poles were tackled with her usual gusto when it comes to anything remotely resembling jumping or involving poles. I tried implementing some of L's tips from our Wednesday evening jumping lessons to our pole work in the hopes of coaxing better canter work out of the pair of us.

Namley that once we were all warmed up with circles, changes of rein, figures of eights, lopsided serpentines as I worked around the poles I'd laid out...I also tried to work in transitions walk/trot & trot/canter - however the latter didn't work so good - either Miss Kika got herself all excited and started anticipating canter requests which led to poor quality trot work or I was tensing in anticipation of the struggle that is our canter work...possibly a combination of both although my negative self-critical thinking is more inclined to blame myself!

"I am impatient to get back to the field - Quit with the pictures!"

Sorry - back on topic of attempting to implement L's jumping advice when working with poles, asking for canter upon landing, or in this case after clearing the line of poles I had down - continuing for either a few strides, a side of the arena or for a circle - kept changing it up all the while aiming for a correct lead strike off and trying to get a nice shape - however this is where I am now feeling like I may have let us down in our spin today.

Thinking back on the quality of our canter work, it was far from great and we slipped back into quite a few incorrect strike offs on our bad rein - I also realise how L is right and I am inclined to lean forward & throw myself into the canter which in no way helps K to stay balanced.

The good news is L has offered to give us a flat lesson tomorrow if we've time - which means a pair of eyes on the ground attached to a set of lungs to yell at me & correct my shortcomings! :-D

Strolling back to the field - showing off her Hay-Belly!

As always - thanks for reading if you've gotten this far!
Please don't be shy about leaving comments - I love feedback!