Sunny disposition

Finally, it's spring! Today car showed outside temp 19 degrees in the sun. 

We had a lovely hack yesterday in the sun with our new-ish friends Lesley and Ellie. Both horses were very well-behaved and we did some good stretches of trotting. Didn't attempt cantering, as wasn't quite sure how Ellie and Rainbow would be together, so kept it to a civilised and pleasant hack around the churn.

Afterwards the lovely girls got out in the paddock. Turned them out without rugs, so this morning I was greeted by a happy mare caked in mud, all over her back and neck. Just perfect for the dressage clinic we partook this morning! I was absolutely covered in horse hair and dried mud by the time I had finished with her. But I didn't mind really, I could tell she had had a good time and given that she's not been able to go out, due to the flooded paddocks, for many weeks, it was all OK.

Dressage clinic went well too – Rainbow didn't try to test my nerves by spooking at silly things in the arena. Despite it's about 5 months since we last went inside those white boards! Though, the nature of the clinic meant that I could walk around the arena with her in peace before commencing the test. I showed the boards to her and she played ball.

I get very nervous when riding a test and even though this was a practice test, it didn't make any difference to my nerves. I noticed, already in the warm up, that I completely stop riding R, to the point my legs are not even properly applied to her sides! I had to have stern words with myself when I noticed this, 'For goodness sake woman, ride the horse like you always ride. It's no excuse to not keep the leg on!' But overall I was pleased and we got a mark of just over 62%, in W&T intro B. So I will keep doing the clinics, as it's a good simulation of a competition situation with the added bonus of immediate feedback from our judge/instructor and a chance to practise some of the bits we struggled with – e.g. using the corners and noting what it means to ride accurately to the markers, for example, when crossing the diagonal, and how to do half circles and circles correctly...