Wowza, it’s been awhile since I last blogged! I’m really not sure where to start. If you follow me on Instagram (Maren_Eventing) then you probably aren’t too far behind on what’s been going on around here (spoiler if you aren’t on Insta, absolutely nothing.).
Brianna got some amazing pictures of my Ollie🥰
Obviously, I haven’t really been doing anything Lately because of Covid, and therefore don’t have a lot too update anyone on, but My coach opened back up for lessons earlier this month! I had a fabulous jump lesson* a week or two (who can keep track anymore?) ago, and I have another one booked for tomorrow as long as the weather corporates.
* social distancing style of course!
all the jumps got repainted and look AMAZING! Plus this fancy for sale sign one is new! Of course my little wonder pony didn’t even look at it even though we hadn’t had a serious jump school in months!! (Ok now I know I’m starting to gush about how awesome Ollie is but like… look at his adorable knees too🤩)
I think I’ll just stick a bunch more pictures from My last lesson and leave it at that for today… I really want to start blogging more again, but it almost feels like I need to do some massive update on what’s happened in the past 6 or so months? No way that’s actually going to happen so I’m just going to pretend I’ve been blogging and try too start up again. Maybe I’ll do a lesson recap sometime in the next week or so after my lesson tomorrow.
He’s like the cutest super pony everMy blog has decided it won’t let me add any videos unfortunately… pictures will have to do for now!Bit of an awkward jump in… this was a skinny one stride to a vertical one stride to another skinnyAs you can see we barley made it over this one…And we finished over this one! I’m not really sure when I decided that 3’5” triple bars looked jumpable but… it didn’t look that scary cantering up to it!
Last Tuesday I had my first dressage lesson in FOREVER. I have no idea why I haven’t been having Dressage lessons… I guess I was having fun with all the Jumping 😉 and the Dressage has been suffering. A lot. Oops? And I’m leaving tomorrow morning for my first event this year… so… we definitely needed that one little Dressage lesson. We worked on GOING FORWARD. (While staying on the bit) Because that’s one of our main problems.
What do you mean this isn’t how you do Dressage?!?
we also worked a lot on my halts. Ollie tends to go,
what? I need to be SOFT AND BENDABLE in my down transitions? What’s going on! The world is ENDING.
Clearly he is over dramatic about it all. They improved slightly though. Odvi some are better then others, and the other way to, but it’s a start!
And on Wednesday I had a Jump lesson. It was pretty similar to the last two, in the way that the same jumps were set up, but my coach wanted me to jump with NO contact. She wanted to see my reins flopping around. And… Ollie loved it. I guess I’ve been interfering with his awesome pony jumping skills… lol. But, um, it’s pretty scary Pointing your horse at a jump and then having NO CONTROL? First we just did a X-pole, which was fine, although Ollie did take one look at it and bolt towards it, which meant that we didn’t canter, we galloped… but still fine. Then my coach said “go into the indoor and come out over the stone wall.” And no rein contact!” *gulp* I’ve been jumping the stone wall a lot recently, so Ollie’s not afraid of it, but… uh, it was still set to 3’? *GULP* and I was afraid of it. So go figure that Ollie stopped, bc I totally grabbed at my reins two strides out. But we went around, and I pointed him at it again and said to myself “DO NOT GRAB THE REINS.” He jumped it quite nicely to. Then we went and did a line of Cross poles with no reins (well, I mean, I had them, but wasn’t using them.) then we jumped this weird Barrel/pole jump. And then a course with the X-pole line, the one stride-two stride, then around to the (again, *Gulp*) blue Oxer line. The last line felt SO good! Plus we got a flying change after the one/two stride! YAY!!!!
Yes I have my reins in this picture. 😂
so… leaving the house at 9am tomorrow morning, hopefully we’ll be at the show grounds by 1! I actually decided to make the move up to ENTRY… (omg, Writing that down made it real😳) and I’m really hoping that goes well! I’m supper excited! But also SOO nervous? Like… omg, there are so many things that could go wrong! What if…?!? Agh! I need to stop. I had a bit of a vest problem, meaning, I tried my hard vest on… and um, it was WAY to small. Plus the rules for hard vests just changed, so finding one that find me, and met the new requirements was really hard. Lucky one of my coach’s other students knew someone who wasn’t riding and they very kindly lend me theirs! And then my coach lent me her extra Air vest😁
My sister Gave me some new spur straps for my Birthday! I’m totally in love! And they match my helmet perfectly. (The black ones are my old spur straps. It’s really not a very fair beauty contest lol)
Also, my sister LOVES to pack stuff, and I HATE it, so I’ve been letting her pack all of Ollie’s stuff. She’s… gone a little crazy?
She decided it was necessary to scrub all my tack clean by hand. Sure! Whatever you want!
This post is going to be big and a random bunch of stuff, but please bare with me. First off, lesson yesterday! My coach started off by setting up a zigzag bounce that looked like this;
The black lines are jumps, and the green line is how you jump through it. (All bounces)
which we trotted through with the poles on the ground. We cantered through, Then coach put two of them up into jumps. Once we’d done that we repeated in the other way, then coach put the remaining two poles up into jumps and we cantered through.
Annddd… I made a bit of a mess of it. But we went through again and it was good. And we went through it the other direction as well.
We’d been doing this bounce, then around to another bounce besides the barrel jump. We switched things up through so that instead of the second bounce we would do the Barrel/Tarp jump. Ollie didn’t realize that, he still thought we were jumping the bounce (my fault.) so when he say the tarp he just stopped. Also, tarps are the one thing that Ollie seems to be scared of.
Ollie- “whaaaaa-”Ollie- “oh, ok.”
once the “drama” had been resolved, we jumped it off of left rein.
Ollie- “still not sure bout this thing…”Ollie- “Hmm… I’ll keep my eye on it.”
then it turned into a little course; yellow upright, stone wall, bounce, yellow upright going the other way, barrels, FORGET COURSE! (But It should have been triple combination, into the indoor and out over the blue polka dot to red upright line.)
Coach raised the two line sides, the stone wall, and the second two jumps in the triple combination up to (😳) three foot. (coach also laughed and said that Entry would now look easy. Not sure that will happen but what ever lol) and after a walk break we went and did that.
Weee!!!🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳 can I say how much I love my pony?!? Bc I don’t think I say it enough! He was totally opening up his stride and giving me his all! And the striding was actually tight for him on the last line. (Hence the rail) which is a new thing for us! Hehe. (Can u tell how pleased I am that I’ve now survived TWO courses at 3’?)
Should I be apologizing for the very large amount of media in this post? Probably. #notsorry
on to the next order of business, Lilliput! She’s been doing great in her ground driving! And I finely got new tires for her buggy…. can you see where this is going?
The princess also got shaved about a week or so ago. It’s definitely easier to brush her;) and I think she likes not being so hot.
I’ve had her pull her buggy a couple times recently, either with me leading by her head, or standing behind the buggy and walking along with the reins to give her an idea of leading by herself. (not sure if that’s the right way to train or not… maybe don’t do it? Worked for me though.) so today when I took her over to my coach’s arena, and she was being SO GOOD! I just couldn’t resist hopping in. I only went around once, I didn’t want to over do anything:) but I did get to ride down coach’s driveway and then up mine.
SO FUN!
(sorry, Video is sideways.)
I’m veerrrryyy tempted to put more photos, but I’m trying to tell myself that I’ve already posted so many.
also, I’ve now got an Instagram! although I have no idea how to use it… so please go check it out at Poniesandpotter! And questions for anyone who have a blog and Instagram, how to you get your Instagram feed to show at the bottom of your blog? Right now I’m thinking It’s wizardry. (Hey! Maybe I should just send a letter to Dumbledore and ask him.)
Ha! We all knew I’d sneak one more picture in here somewhere.
haha, we were definitely overdue for this! Recently my coach has been into angled jumps, I personally love angled jumps! So I’m not complaining 😁 in my lesson just over a week ago, we did this course;
Looks super confusing on paper (on screen?) but makes more sense if you can actually see it in person.
it was very fun! But SOOOO hard to set up! Like omg, it took forever. It was making sure that all the striding was right while making sure that nothing was blocking the path of anything else that took so long! And, of course, dragging the poles and standards around. I don’t really recall much from that lesson. (Ugh, my memory is horrible) but the course I did today was this one;
Much easier to set up.
Ollie was a bit stiff in his hind end, so we decided to only do X-poles, which he seemed totally ok with! First we trotted into the second jumps in the lines, (the jump on the bottom right and then the one on the bottom left) just cutting in before the first fence and leg yielding out. Then we put the jumps together and cantered through.
Then the angled lines;
Then we put the whole thing together, first jumping the oxer in the middle by itself going away, then right hand turn- across the diagonal, through the vertical line, left turn across the second angled line, then through the oxer line. We had a couple “questionable” moments, but Ollie felt good! And I somewhat remembered how to ride… so overall, it was definitely a success!
Ponies and Potter 