A quickie!

Just some notes:

• Ari has been on and off since Chatt Hills. Nothing I could quite put my finger on, but he was clearly NOT happy and not comfortable. I had his hocks done and changed to a different farrier to see if he could help support his unhappy hocks. I'm finally (two weeks later) seeing a positive change and am hoping to continue in this trend. I need to have the chiro out to have him adjusted and see if I can help his left hind. It's his weakest point right now and I'd like to keep him as comfortable as possible. He owes me nothing, but I do enjoy competing him and I think he likes his job, so we'd like to stay on that track as long as possible.

• Brandy is staring to "give" through her back. This comes at both a good and bad time, since it will greatly improve some of her dressage movements before we make the move to training, but it also means we've regressed in some of our movement to allow her to find her new balance. Dressage is an ever-morphing balance with tons of forward and back. Thats the joy (and the pain.)

• I'm officially entered to run training at Maydaze. I got Brandy in October of 2008, I have brought her along myself with the help of Amy and she's the one I will finally get the chance to run training on! My original goal was training in 2010, but I'd say 2011 is pretty good, considering! I'm very excited and will just be glad to have a positive run on her. 

• I took Pumpkin to Walnut Trace to school XC today- he was a rockstar. He seemed to really like it and I'm hoping this with throw the switch in his head that jumping the first time is the best answer- it seems like a lot of horses don't understand jumping a pole in an arena, but seem to love jumping logs and coops and "solid things" in a field. He was game and had a lot of fun! 

• I love my students. They make me smile. I like watching them grow more confident and their ambitions change and the lightbulbs when they finally "turn on." I have the best students in the world. So there.

I will do a recap of Poplar here at some point!