Where has the year gone?

 I had big ideas for blogging in 2023, where the heck has the year gone? How is it already March? Hopefully with the plans that I have in place, I will have so much to tell you about that I will take time to talk about it. So...where first?

When I left off, I had finally recovered from the Covid lung issues that kept me from doing virtually any work. Thankfully that has not returned. January and February were really hit or miss in riding due to the weather, but I have made some excellent progress in dressage. I am quite comfortable with the Novice level tests and we have played with the Training level tests and while not perfect, I am not hating my rides. I have started riding in my jump saddle for dressage and while it works, I don't love it. It is a jump saddle for a reason and it really wants me forward. Perfectly place where I need to be over a jump. *sigh* 

What is all this?! 

I tried my dressage saddle on Mia back in January and even when free lunging, she refused to go forward. She doesn't like it. In February I had the saddle fitter back out to see what she thought. She is of the opinion that the saddle fits perfectly and looks like it was made for Mia, so she isn't sure why Mia doesn't like it. We then tried all models of saddles that she had in her car to see if Mia liked any of those, Mia did not. There were models Mia liked better, but she wasn't super happy with any of them. Whatever has happened after the Lyme ordeal, Mia is no longer a fan of the Trilogy saddles. Back to the drawing board I go, I really do love my dressage saddle too. If anyone is shopping for a MW 18" Trilogy Verago, I guess I now have one for sale.

We finally started jumping again in late February and right about that time I saw something that caught my eye. A clinic with 5* eventer Daniela Moguel. About an hour from my house. On a weekend I have open. With the incredibly annoying inability to find a trainer who can travel, I have been needing a serious kick in the pants to get working again. So I made the extremely impulsive decision to enter the clinic. It gave me exactly a month to get fit enough to jump 3' consistently, because I also went "all-in" and chose the N/T group. Nothing like setting a huge goal to get my butt in gear.

Mia's happy place

Things have been going mostly okay since I paid the clinic fee, even though I feel like I am waiting for the disaster to strike. I have ridden at least 3x per week, even with the very persistent snow/ice storms that have hit us 3 weeks in a row. I have successfully worked up to 3 sessions of 3 minutes of two point and am going to bump that up to 4 minutes at my next ride. Mia is comfortably jumping 2'6" and we are bumping that up this week as well. We have only 2 weeks before the clinic and I am determined to get us there!