Mark Todd comes back to haunt me...

I remember as a young teen when Mark Todd was winning everything on wee Charisma (what a dude of a horse) Toddy would always praise the horse when anything went well, and always blamed himself if anything went wrong... Such a great and humble horseman, well FINALLY I'm reaching that point for myself.

FINALLY instead of thinking "but it must be Mac, I'm not doing anything wrong (or different)" I've put the magnifying glass on myself after reading Dancing With Horses by Klaus Hempfling and hey presto when mumma is straight, Mac is straight, when Mumma is right Mac is right. Poor old Mac, Mum's just been a crap rider up till now and he's been trying to compensate for my crap riding and getting told off for it (yeah yeah, some of us still don't listen well LOL) but I'm making it up to him now and it's never too late!

We're finally coming together not just in mind and spirit but finally in body too and it's a great feeling. After months and months of frustation and feeling like we're going backwards I finally feel like I can see where we're actually going and I'm gonna love every step of the journey!

It's not enough to just ride with the mind when the body is screaming something opposite, you must at least be neutral with the body if you want good results with the mind work LOL.

Mac my very patient teacher, the love of my life xxxx

Winter Dressage Series ends on a HIGH!

and no I didn't win it, but Oh My God, what a warmup we had for the afternoon! The energy was literally zapping through us both, the work was just BRILLIANT (and I'm the first to say "that was crap" even when others think it was good) so Brilliant from me is really something, and the full on energy buzz up my back when he hit his perfection was literally such a buzz LOL. I'm still grinning just thinking about it. Of course by the time we got to the arena it'd pretty much gone out the window *sigh* but still we were the consistent ones over the series turning up and doing every test (and getting placed due to low entries hehehe) so we came home with the Elementary Champion Trophy and gorgeous rosette.

Have picked up and continuing reading Klaus Hempflings book Dancing with Horses and it's going into now how to get the collection and work out of them while riding (previously he was talking about all the groundwork as preparation) and it all makes a lot of sense and is actually the same body position as our martial arts uses so SHOULD be easily enough to transfer across to riding right????

hahaha

Jumped on Smokey yesterday and tried to put it into practice and he was great, his little sewing machine pony legs trot is actually surprisingly easy to sit too! And I could feel and follow easily the motion of his body. He was however frisky and it was a glorious (nearly) spring day and after 1/2 hour of trotting round he started head shaking! It appears he doesn't like sweat trickling down his face! He also thought the hose was going to eat him so hosing him off afterwards turned into a bit of a test for my temper and his stubborness! Got him in the end and once the water was on him (just like him backing away from people too!) he just stopped.

Oh and he got his front feet trimmed by the farrier on Monday!!! I kept telling him to trust the farrier, trust the farrier, it wasn't of course working, so I told him to trust ME, as I trust the farrier, that was acceptable to him and front feet got done and back feet picked up :o)

Mac's ride yesterday was a lot harder to get the feel of than Smokey! His trot is so big that I tend to just try to absorb it all with pelvis and spine together and don't let them work independantly of each other, but we got it several times so something to work on. I then took the stirrups away and actually crossed them in front of the saddle (first time for everything) and even had a wee trot like that with him tense but not going to explode on me :o)

Have also been a case study for a friend who is now doing her people Bowen certification and if I can now keep that pelvis moving and stretched hopefully I'll be a lot more even on the horses! Thanks Kimberley!