Dressage it up!

So, this week has been a lot easier at the farm. I'm getting used to how things are done so I'm not feeling so useless now. :) Lessons have been going well and I'm learning a LOT here so I'm really enjoying it. I'm hoping that my lessons here will help nix some of the bad habits I've acquired while riding so that I'm better equipped to work with Miss Maddy when I get home and give her a proper start (of course along with E's help).  This time I've been away and working with other people's horses and on other people's farms, just really makes me excited to get back to our farm and our horses and try some new things out and really get things going (on the horse front anyways).  I'd lost interest in competitive riding and seriously training dressage over the past year and I think this has rekindled my motivation to actually DO something with Maddy, rather than just putz around (which is fine and all, but I've been needing something more to aim for). I'm still wanting to do all the fun stuff as well but I'm going to put some goals down for me and Maddy this year and with the help of my coach, E, put together an obtainable game plan for this year.

Farm news:
 Ellie and Onnagh have left so we're down to 4 girls on most days, 5 girls when no one has the day off so the days are actually going a bit faster-although they aren't as much fun :(. Ellie put on the Rocky Horror Picture Show one evening and there was a lot of singing and dancing that followed the next day at work haha.
 We had two horses leave that were here for just a week (and needed a lot of attention like legs wrapped and medication etc) so that helps with the workload, and Dancer, one of the horses that was bred here at the farm has been sold to a show home! Yay Dancer! It's kind of sad for us because Dancer was one of the super sweet horses on the farm, but her new owners plan on keeping her very long term and showing her and eventually breeding her as well so it seems like a really good life for her.
We have a new horse here though, well he's here for a week to learn Piaffe.  Yah.. I know.. a week to learn Piaffe seems kind of short, but we'll see how it goes! This horse is MASSIVE! And when he gets excited when you're leading him he gets even bigger! I need to stand on a half barrel to put his bridle on haha I honestly think this horse is close to 18hh!

So, super fantastic news yet again... MOM'S COMING TO LONDON!!!!!!!! I'm VERY excited to see my mom! She's going to arrive in London on April 22nd in the morning and I'll be meeting her at the hotel a bit later in the day on the 22nd. :) We're going to take a day or two in London and check it out, then she's booked us on a bus tour through Scotland and Wales! Yay! So we're going to check out some neat landmarks and places over 9 days or so and then end up back in London after the royal wedding is done with.  So the way I see it... is just 3 more days off (3 more weeks) until I get to see my mom! And then 2 weeks after that, Brad will get here (the day after mom leaves) and then we're going to check out London together, then Rome, then Dublin :) And rent a car and kidnap Katie (among other thing lol).

I wish I had some exciting photos for you to post this week, but I don't really have much to show! The farm looks the same as it did before ;) and I can't really get a pic of me riding... cause unless you want a self portrait of me concentrating while trying to do a sitting trot on an uncomfortable horse.. lol you guys won't be interested! haha I'll try to take some pics this week and get them up on here.

My first day off at the new farm!

Wahoo! I have a day off! It's been a looooooooooooong first week here but I've learnt so much already. I'm really happy that I made the change and came over to Sheepcote to stay for the rest of my trip.  Although all the horses have quirks and their own issues, the fundamentals of training are there so you've got something to work both on the ground and under saddle.  The farm itself is beautiful (as you can see from my previous post) and everyone is pretty friendly here. Our coach David is a typical European dressage coach lol but all of us learn a lot from each lesson so it's all good.  He has this rule for his arena, if your horse has to poop, you have to stop as soon as you notice and yell "droppings" and then he or someone watching runs out with a skip (pooper scooper) and removes it.  It's kind of strange to get used to stopping a horse if they have to poop rather than pushing them forward, but it makes sense as his arena is gorgeous and he said that your horse should be listening to you enough that at a show while riding a test, if the horse needs to "go" they will not stop if you don't ask them for it.

We have a group lesson at about noon each day followed by a lunch break before we continue on with the rest of our work day.  Even though we have group lessons, David coaches each one of us individually which is nice. What I'm working on right now is controlling my muscles so that I can properly ask the horse to engage himself (relaxing my seat when I use my legs, properly using my lower leg, asking for flexion at the same time as asking the horse to engage his hind end, etc).  I've been working for so long on relaxing horses and trying to just get them to do things calmly and it's been a very long time (since I was a teen) that I've actually had to put a horse fully together in prep for higher level movements.  It's nice to do, but right now it feels totally foreign to me, ahh well, I'll get used to it!

On a non-horsey note:
I purchased a cell phone! Yahoo! lol Which means that even though I'm trying to limit my calls since it cost a LOT to call back home, I can actually talk to my mom (since skype and her an my schedules don't really work out for talking) and I had a chance to talk to my best bud, Krystina. :) It was so nice to hear their voices! Unfortunately my dad didn't answer the call (must have been in a bad cell area) but I'm hoping to give him a shout again soon. :)

Well, since it is my day off, and so far it's been jammed packed with some sleeping in, a little walk around the farm (went to take pics then noticed my battery was dead... uggg), charged my camera for a bit, watched the girls' lesson, ate some lunch and came on the computer for a bit... I think I might put on a movie and lay down for a bit-it's going to be another long week once tomorrow comes so I'm going to be as lazy as I can today and rest up! Hopefully my body fully lasts through this next week!

French Lucy on Tom!

Ellie on Hector! Her family has a trekking center in Wales and she's going to bring Hector back on a lease next week. :) Gunna miss both of them!

It's Spring here on the farm, and there are flowers everywhere

David doing poop patrol :) 

Three of the girls hanging out at the end of the lesson.  I normally ride Walk About, the big bay on the left. 

Ellie and Hector after the lesson :) 

March 12th Post

So, turns out I should look more carefully at travel information before planning a trip! I was under the impression that I was to arrive in London at 9pm on March 11th, turns out, I arrived about 9am March 12-that was one LONG trip (not to mention that I didn't need to book the hostel that I did for the night of March 11th in London lol)! THe ferry was very fancy, however it was rocking back and forth quite a bit last night, making my head and stomache feel icky to say the least!I thought that food might help my head and although the fish and chips (and mushy peas) were delicious and the staff quite friendly, I think the food actually made me feel more sick! I was glad to be off the ferry at about 1am this morning and back onto the bus.  The elderly man sitting next to me on the bus was a bit lonely I guess because he kept talking to me for the rest of the trip-so with the exception of one hour sleeping on the ferry and another hour once the old man got off at his stop, I'm running on not a lot of sleep at the moment!  Unfortunately I couldn't get ahold of Maggie when I got into London this morning so breakfast/lunch didn't happen with her, and I felt like I should probably get started on the rest of my trip as it always seems to take longer than I expect! haha The London underground system is massive-but not too  bad once you get the hang of it (and also get used to the equally massive crowds of people) and I'm now on a train (yes an actual train) heading to Hereford to make my way out to the farm.  I should arrive in Hereford at a little past 1pm here, and then I will be taking a taxi from there to the farm-which is apparently a 10 min drive, we'll see...

So far I'm liking London, or what I've seen so far.  It's a little bit more like Van city in the way that people are up and about earlier than in Dublin and ready to start their day-it's a bit more like what I'm used to. :) In Dublin, it was funny, nothing was open until about 9 or 10am- noon on Sundays if they were open (even breakfast places lol) and if you saw anyone in the street before that time, chances are that they were still out from the night before! It's kind of funny because the stereotype of the Irish is that they drink frequently-I mean, I know the at home if you're Irish, you drink but the stereotype is actually pretty spot on from what I saw haha.

Even though I'm VERY tired and pretty physically exhausted right now, I'm in a really good mood. :) The sun is out here in London and I got a chance to have a quick late night call with mom, dad when I got into Victoria station (well it was about 8:45am for me, midnight for them oops).

March 11th Post :)

You know it's going to be a good trip when your bus driver tells you "good luck" when you show him your boarding pass! It's been a while since I've written a post on here and I apologize.  It's mainly to do with the lack of consistent internet connection combined with how tired I've been as soon as I'm done work for the day.  Our days off in Belmont consist of sleeping in a little bit, then heading into Athlone to get some groceries and drop who ever is leaving the farm off at the bus station, and possibly vegging out with whatever junk food we'd just purchased and watching a movie. I've also been holding off on updating my blog as I was in the process of finding a new place to work at. Belmont has been a good experience and I'm happy I came here, however it's really not the style of riding that I'm interested in and with the large amount of horses, it was difficult to spend the necessary time with each one in order to put any "real" work into them. I'm now on my way to Hereford to another facility with a smaller amount of horses (only 35) that offers a daily lesson so I'm hoping that by changing facilities I'll be able to receive more instruction with my riding rather than just doing the grunt work around the farm like painting walls, pressure washing etc like we did a fair amount of at Belmont. I really like Ireland and I wish I'd actually had a chance to see some more of it, but with one day off, and a shared vehicle, I didn't get to see too much while I was there.  Since my flight leaves from Dublin, I'd like to come back a few days earlier and possibly rent a car and see more of the countryside before I fly back to Canada! 

For right now, I'm currently writing this on a bus, on my way back to Dublin to catch another bus that will take me over the ferry and to Victoria Station, London, England, where I'm going to spending the night, then heading out to Hereford the next day. It's pretty exciting heading somewhere new again. I really liked all the people at Belmont so I'm sad to leave, and I really a couple of them were coming with me to this new place. I've been told that this Ferry ride I'm going to be taking is rough at the best of days-today is a lovely rainy, windy day in Ireland so I'm sure it will just be a ton of fun lol. I'm going to try to upload photos perhaps when I post this haha, what I was going to say was that I'll post some photos once I have a normal internet connection again-so it might be when I post this, and it might have to wait a little bit longer for updates on here. I've been able to post a wee bit on Facebook and the majority of the photos are on there. Anyways, I'm getting a little bit "bus sick" typing while being on the bus so I'm going to stop this post now and with any luck, I'll be posting it online tonight! 

Cheers