fill in the gaps

Okay, the missing updates... apologies in advance as it won't actually be all that interesting.

After getting her hooves trimmed on Saturday little Silviapples was too sore to be ridden on Sunday, and on Monday wasn't a whole lot better (so I didn't ride her at all). Tuesday she was fine to be ridden in her paddock on the grass, but still owchy on the arena and quite tender on the concrete area around the stables. Wednesday I gave her the day off again and then on Thursday she was feeling heaps better - I walked her on the road (only a few hundred metres) and gave her a proper (but short) school in the arena. She was really good, but I think still just the tiniest bit tender as she was having trouble keeping a good canter on the right rein and got disunited a few times. Friday was yucky weather and another day off. Saturday was also yucky weather but we both braved it and did some canter work in her paddock, along with a lot of work in and around the creek, getting her to enter at a lot of different points and walk upstream for 100m or so, it was about knee high, so quite deep for her - she got a bit tizzy about it, but did well.

Sunday was the XC practise at QE2 - for a start I forgot my boots so had to wear my gummies for jumping (which isn't actually the easiest thing in the world, but looks so damn cool). Silvi was really nice and relaxed tied to the truck and the atmosphere didn't appear to bother her. She warmed up really well, only getting a little jig-joggy the first few times people cantered past fast or jumped fences while we were close, after those first few times she didn't even seem to register the other horses on her radar. She did put her head down when I did one of my faster canters in my warmup, but pulled up and went off merrily on our way with no incident.

The first fence we went to was a little rotten log - she seemed fairly sure it was going to attack her and jumped several feet over it 3 times (by this stage I decided to move on from the log!).

Next was the water jump which did prove to be a problem. It took us a long time to get her to trot in, but I know that a lot of horses don't like the sloped trot in entrances when it's all boggy - and once we got her into the water once she was a lot better and even managed to jump in and out (small options) by the end of our rather extended stay at the water jump.

We went on to the bank which she wanted to have a look at first but then popped up and off like a pro (the baby sized bank), and then over to the coffin. She leapt over the ditch perfectly and even jumped the combination (upright-coffin-upright) without batting an eyelid, she has nice impulsion through combinations.

She also did the little pre-training corner and then went back to the truck. She was a really tired horsey by now and to make matters worse the traffic was held up around Porirua so it took quite a long time to get home, and weather was snotty as when we got to the farm, so I popped her in the stable and she was just so happy to be cozy in her nice warm stable with a big feed. I popped out at about midnight to put her in her paddock so she could stretch her legs and not be too stiff in the morning.

Monday was a day off and a big feed, and then last night I went out a bit later than usual, but did a big schooling session trying out some of the dressage movements she will be doing this weekend (loops, 20m circles) . I'm still not sure exactly which classes I'm going to ride in, but she's entered for 2x Training (NZPCA Q and T) and 2x Prelim tests (1.3 and 1.5).