What is a twenty meter circle anyway?

Lots to report over here with another successful weekend of riding behind us. If you live in the Northeast you know that we got an inordinate amount of rain and a freak thunderstorm during the week that left everything a big wet mess. We were able to get the ring sorta dragged Saturday enough to do some flat work and Riley got reintroduced to the Pessoa. In the ring we worked on slightly raised cavalettis and two canter poles set 60 ft apart. I could feel the gears turning in Riley's brain approaching the 4 raised poles like, "Am I supposed to jump all of these"? Luckily he didn't, though he felt like cantering a few of them made much more sense!

I took a trip down to Dover and Maryland Saddlery on the hunt for a few things for the pony and a dressage whip. I was also looking for a new helmet, but they didn't have any of the new ones in yet:/ I did pick out a new whip and also picked up this little beauty that I've been obsessed with (plus 30% off)!

From Dover's site: Because who doesn't love houndstooth?

When things don't turn out the way you hoped...

hehehehehe I'm still "retired"

What do you do?

Well, if you're a horse-crazed lunatic like myself, you do everything you can to spend as much time around those beasts as possible. Everyone knows ponies are good for the soul.

I started making plans for Riley (shhhhh).

I booked a lesson.

I've been riding all sorts of OTTBs to keep my mind busy.

You change your blog header and background.

And when all else fails, there's the pool -- because a little R & R never hurts right?

And I am sorry for the breaks in between posts, and leaving you guys hanging with an announcement of a lesson cliffhanger, but the full report is coming right up!

Keeping a horse in Area II sure has it's advantages. I am a stone's throw from an Olympic rider in every direction. Like, True Prospect farm is a 5 minute hack. Which is great for training purposes because our neck of the woods is just littered with awesome trainers to lesson with. And with Riley still semi out of commission I thought that taking some lessons might help me get some finesse back (because boy have I lost it). Don't get me wrong, I'm stoked I get to ride all the OTTBs, but they're not doing much for my position on the flat and confidence over fences. It's been a really long time since I had a formal lesson with anyone but Emily. She's terrific and knows me inside and out, but we are super good friends and that leads to me bargaining my way out of doing things that I'm worried about and to be honest lessoning on Riley can be very challenging at this stage in his training. So I was pretty concerned I'd make a damn fool of myself. Plus, I needed to find a trainer who had a school horse or two to teach me on (again, a little bit tricky). As luck would have it, the nearby indoor that we hack to frequently, has a BNR who I've known for awhile. She competes a horse owned by the BO at our old place and she's a hell of a rider... I watched her teach a little last time I rode at the indoor and I really liked her approach so I contacted her for a lesson! She has two horses that she teaches lessons on, her former ** ISH and her former advanced OTTB! Woo hoo!