Somewhere over the Rainbow...: Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas to 'all' my blog's readers! Quotation marks as I am not sure how many I have! Only four, so far, have made themselves known in the reader list. But, nevertheless, thank you for reading my ramblings on and here's to another year of horsey stuff and life!

Things have started to improve again after my loss of confidence a couple of weeks ago. I have had a couple of booster lessons with Annika, private and in a group, to get going with R again. She has been trying to 'spook' at things but I have taken heed of Annika's advice and started to ride R with more purpose. If/when she has tried to look at something I have given her more leg or tapped with a whip to say "Oi, listen to me, you ARE going as I want you to go, no messing." And I think it has worked.

To round up the year with Rainbow, we took part in Christmas Dressage competition yesterday. First I wasn't going to do it, due to being busy with Christmas prep, but then I realised it might be my last chance to ride R before the Xmas break, and as the school is always reserved for competitors on the day, I knew I wouldn't otherwise have a chance of riding indoors. As my decision to take part was as quick as made on the day before, I didn't even have a chance to learn the test, so I asked for a reader.

Fancy dress was optional. We donned reindeer antlers and I had a bit of tinsel around my neck. I didn't know if Rainbow would be afraid of the tinsel, so didn't put any on her, just in case. However, she seemed to be very interested in my tinsel and tried to eat it off my neck! So she's not scared. Tim came to help me with the preparations – attaching the antlers on both, and such. I also made him plait some of Rainbow's mane. He was doing as instructed but exclaimed that you can tell they've been done by a man. They were perhaps a little haphazard but I think we weren't exactly Grand Prix either :).

In order to get some extra points, I introduced myself and Rainbow to the judges as "Elina and 'Reindeer'... I mean Rainbow!" *cue laughter* ... Well I thought it was funny...

The rest of the test didn't go brilliantly, I only remembered the first two moves and after that had to rely on the reader. When we had to do two half circles from E to X and then X to B, my mind went blank as to which way I was meant to tackle it. So lost two points on that. Silly me! Anyway, overall, we didn't do much worse than last time: 57,39%. And, now we have done both W&T test A and B, so now we can start improving on both. I maintain the main thing is to do it, to make competition as routine as possible, then we can start improving on our craft.