Good stuff and not so good stuff

I can't think of a snazzy title this week (are they ever that snazzy anyway...!?) but this seems to sum it up.

I popped in Finland over the weekend, it was a friend's birthday, and stayed at my parents, of course. I decided to make a birthday card for my friend out of old photos, so I spent several hours last Thu flicking through all old photos I could find. I unearthed some old horsey pictures too... I ran out of time to scan them, so I have asked mum to scan them for me sometime in the near future, and perhaps I will share them with you too :)

I returned home early on Sunday morning. I had to get up at around 4:30am (Finnish time, which is two hours ahead UK) to catch the flight, so by the time I reached the yard, I had been up over 12 hours. So even the relative short distance from Finland to England, managed to make me feel somewhat jet-lagged! 

It was a dressage day, so I had made arrangements with a friend to escape 'the dressagers' and go for a gentle hack around the village. My friend's horse was quite bouncy and spooky (with no real reasons to be so), but I usually prefer others leading, so my friend bravely did so... Although at some points, like balloons on a gate post and a grass trimmer howling behind a hedge, my friend's horse wasn't able to cope with the 'stress', nearly at one point doing a 360 degree retreat to the direction we were coming from, I had to take the lead with Rainbow and show the way. Rainbow, of course, could hear the trimmer as well as some children playing behind a fence, but as I stayed calm and just 'ploughed on', she didn't as much as bat an eyelid. A really good girl. I think my friend was also quite surprised of these brave qualities of Rainbow, as, because of my insecurities I may paint a picture of a more problematic/spooky horse than she is. She is not, in fact, she is quite bliming brave and dependable. Well, has been so far. And her spooks are usually just 'stop and look', rather than 'help! let's run AWAYYYYY...!'. Which is good. 

So very proud of my mare and, in a jet-lag haze, I left her in her stable as I returned home and went to bed at 5pm only to wake up at 6am this morning... I think I needed to sleep!

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The not-so-good stuff is about our saddle. I am not sure if I am going to go into details in this post as I have only just had the saddler round to check it this afternoon and I have been told things that aren't making me very happy with the original saddler's service, etc. I have approached them, so perhaps once I know what's happening, I will talk about my saddle and what's been going on...

Basically it was condemned as rather ill-fitting and the saddler I called out today wasn't going to touch it as they thought I should take it up with the original saddler first... And they would need to fix it. 

Granted, Rainbow has changed shape since we had the saddle made, but there are other issues which I wasn't informed about at the time of buying the saddle, which makes me a little annoyed with the saddler as well as myself for being so stupid (well, I am doing my best and learning as I go!) for trusting a saddle having been made for R to fit her OK. It apparently doesn't. And I had suspected that, as that's why I've been using a gel pad riser under it, but anyway... Luckily Rainbow is of a patient sort and hasn't played up too much, but I have a feeling that if I fix the saddle (or buy a new one), her gaits/movement will be improved.... as I don't think she likes her saddle much...