All The Kings' Horses

 Danielle and I went to a clinic last Thursday 4/3, that was recommended to me by a friend, and I've been raving about it ever since!  The clinician's name was Pippa Callanan , and you can click on the link to learn more about her.  She blends natural horsemanship with classical French dressage.  I LOVED it!  I found her saying things, even verbatim, to what I tell my students.  There is so much to tell from this clinic, but as I will be incorporating things from it as I go, I will just tell you stuff as I incorporate it.  (Although some stuff I'm already doing anyway 😊). So on Tuesday, April 8th, Gia and I had a lesson with Suzin for the first time in quite a while, since before both our surgeries.  One thing I saw from the clinic was that I was pretty much doing the same things that she was, especially when I stuck with my natural horsemanship stuff and my classical dressage stuff, and a lot of that classical dressage stuff was originally taugh...

I took Gia to the Portofino show this past weekend.  She and I were part of an Equithon team with Amanda and Annie.  Amanda and Annie did the dressage test of the Starter horse trial, while Gia and I ran both jump courses.   Gia warmed up ok.  She was a bit overwhelmed when we first went into the stadium warm up.  She was quite tense, so we just walked, and worked on responding to forward and sideways, like we had at home.  When that old familiarness started to feel good to her, she started to relax, and allowed the trot.  We did the same at the trot, and then we were quickly able to add a few jumps in.  After that the warm up was a breeze. Unfortunately, she tensed right up again when we went into the show ring.  She had no problem going forward though, but she went forward FAST!  So then, I tensed up ... which led to her bucking.  It took a few jumps before I was able to situate myself so that I could slow her down using my b...

 Okay, so I did fall behind again in writing my blogs. I will have to catch up on several of them in this one blog, and then I will try to stay on top of things. "Try" being the operative word 😆. Monday March 24th:     Gia and I worked on flat work at the walk and trot. Her impulsion was fairly good. We focused a lot on straightness. We also did a lot of work on transitions and got in some stretching. Tuesday March 25th:          Gia and I worked on flat work again. This time we did a bit at the walk, trot and canter. her impulsion was very good, as well as her transitions. We focused a bit more on straightness this time. Wednesday March 26th:     More flat work for us today. we worked at the  walk, trot and canter . Gia's impulsion was very good. We focused more on straightness, and added some focus on collection as well. Friday March 28th:     Gia and I were able to get out in the field today for jumping. We were able t...