Steps forward, steps back

Last month I had a clinic with Dani Moguel. I totally planned to do a full write up, I do have lots of footage, but I got super busy. The footage isn't great because the Pivo was misbehaving, and blogging fell to the wayside. The cliff notes? She really liked Mia and she really liked my riding. We weren't as fit as I hoped, but we were close. Mia and I jumped about half as much as the other rider in my group because Mia was nailing it #Winning I am very glad I chose to do the Novice/Training division, it was challenging but completely within our capacity.

Dani clinic!

One of the best things that happened in the clinic is that I was able to pull our training from 2020/2021 out and tap into Mia's power. Developing her power is something I haven't done since her Lyme diagnosis and it was super cool to see that we could still do it. We struggled with keeping the power up mostly due to Mia's fitness and my lack of practice, but it was so fun to tap into after all of this time. I really enjoyed the clinic and am going to sign up for the next one in July.

More injuries

Our big take away from the clinic is to stop focusing on finding a distance and instead focus on creating a good rhythm. Mia will figure out the takeoff spot, getting and keeping the rhythm while also keeping the power up is what I need to keep working on. Mia and I got back from the clinic ready to work on it all when the barn cats knocked my (only) saddle off of the top of a 3 tier saddle rack and suddenly my saddle started squeaking. After bringing it to a saddler, we found the gullet plate was cracked. Thankfully the tree will be replaced under warranty by County, but there is a 9-12 week turn around and I was told I should not ride in the saddle. *sigh* 

Such a cute snoot

I immediately bought another saddle, almost identical to mine, but didn't even get to ride in it when Mia came up lame with an abscess. It took 2 weeks to pop, deciding to do so while I went down to LRK3DE.