Another video

I thought I would post this video I made last winter about my jumping exploits with Santana and my daughter and my friend Angie. As you can see Santana hadn't done much jumping so we were keeping them small, and of course he had the draw reins on. I only used them a couple of times.

Jumping This & That from Jooles1111 on Vimeo.

The Best Laid Plans

Well, my few days off didn't work out quite as planned as far as riding goes. Thursday poured with rain and sleet all day then it snowed overnight so we woke up to a blanket of snow on Friday morning. Friday was quite warm though and most of the snow had melted by lunchtime so I managed to sneak a quick ride. The farm was so wet that all we could do was go out round the block but it was better than nothing.

As my riding plans were thwarted on Thursday I used the spare time to make a video which I have been trying to upload to Youtube ever since. I finally managed it this afternoon by saving in a poor quality wmv format.

When I look back to what I was doing with Santana in the early summer I'm amazed. We seem to be going backwards, which is not good!

On our ride on Saturday we went round the roads again and when we got back to the farm we walked round the outside of the front field. As we turned the corner, something spooked Santana from behind and he was off. I managed to turn him in a circle and then kept him going round and round until he got fed up with it. When I say something spooked him, there was actually nothing, he just imagined a monster. He never used to be like that at all so its a bit unnerving and unpredictable at the moment.

Today I just rode round the circle, trotting mainly with a couple of canters and it was all good apart from first getting on board when he was very tense and jumpy. As soon as we walk of he relaxes. I think he sees my right foot coming over his back and it frightens him, although its not as if anything has happened to make him scared other than the time when I fell off on the ice.

I just can't wait for the better weather and drier ground so I can get some more riding and schooling in and get back to where we were.

Another Birthday

I'm sure as I've got older birthdays come round far quicker than they did when I was young. I seem to remember it being an eternity between birthdays. Nowadays they whizz round far too fast and I don't like it at all!

So, its my birthday today, and I'm sitting here at work wondering why I didn't take the day off and spend it riding. What was I thinking?!

Oh well, I have Thursday and Friday off so I can look forward to the other end of the week.

Keeping my fingers crossed for some half decent weather.