Updates

A lot has happened lately, where to begin?!?  Well let's start with this weekend.  I had 2 lessons, one with a girl who knows gaited gaits and one with my normal instructor.  MIL had a medical emergency that required SO to travel back to Ohio, hoping he comes back tomorrow.  Had gutters put up on my barn and arena.  Got real internet.  Also kept myself sane.

My lesson with the gaited gal went pretty good.  I was happy to hear that I know the TWH gaits pretty well and am working in the right direction for him.  I didn't get as much out of the lesson as I had hoped but she is going to try to set up a long lining session with one of her horses free of charge.  She thinks that would help him and I am not experienced with it so I don't have the techniques or finesse.  I can ground drive and lunge so it should be an easy transition.  I had to reiterate many times that I am not interested in showing, that my reason for this lesson is simply to expand my knowledge on the gaited gaits.  She did say I didn't need regular lessons, only occasional pointers so that was good.  Overall I had a good time and met someone I seem to mesh with well.

My lesson with my instructor was a little disappointing, I really didn't get the feedback I was hoping for.  Our plan was to ride the new dressage tests and get feedback.  While I did get feedback, it was about a quarter in volume as I was expecting.  The App was slight off in his left hind and didn't work out of it.  We found we can ride First 1 this year if I can get him consistent again so I now have a goal.  The lesson with the TWH didn't go as I anticipated, with it being cut short in addition to very little feedback.  We rode Training 1 and he did pretty good.  Need to try the intro tests to see if we can trot them.  We do need to work on our walk/canter transitions and get them sharper before our show season.  Overall I really didn't like the "feel" of the lesson, hoping it was just an off day and next weekend will be better.

Thanks to the great melt and rain, the barn and arena have been flooding so I hired a contractor to put gutters up.  Had seamless gutters installed and am hoping for some good drainage now.  Am very happy to see how well they work since we will be getting rain tonight and on Thursday.  Here's to less flooding and the same amount of mud!

Hoping for a better week and that SO comes home soon.  It is difficult to do everything myself and still stay positive.  A couple of nights I was a bit moody when I finally talked to SO and I know I shouldn't be.  On the plus side we now have DSL internet and it makes me quite happy.  I can now watch a video and not have to wait forever for it to load.  And listen to music online again.  And and and.  The only downside is that it goes down much more frequently than my broadband, the upside is that it comes up within a minute of going down and without intervention on my part.  Hoping that resolves itself soon cause I need a break somewhere.