it's been a while...

well we went to the event at the covered arena - and it was not terribly successful. The warm up area is outdoors a little way down the drive - and she was ok out there. But we wandered up to the arena and had to stand for a short while for the previous competitor to finish. Went in to the arena and pretty much ground to a halt.

I think it was a combination of the stop, and of the judge and writer being sat there (and hence she wanted to stick with them :rollseyes:) Either way we ended up retiring...

So it was back to square one. We've continued to work at home and she really hasn't been as resistant as she was at the competition. We've made sure we include more swaps of rider to mimic the stop/start - and she does tend to dig her heels in a bit when asked to start again.

Last weekend we were part of a breed demo. There are two young lads, brothers, who have one Eriskay pony between them. So the "other" one rode Rosie (two demos, so they swapped). Rosie was a good girl and kept going - but then she always is better in company. She even had a few strides of canter the second time :D

We're just starting to get stubble fields we can ride on and we took her out this weekend to play "circle round the bales". She was much more forward going out of the arena.

There is another dressage coming up but I'm not planning to go as I'm not convinced we've done enough about the issues yet.

I'd hoped to take Rosie to a clinic in November but the venue has no stabling and is far enough away that I can't commute daily to it :(

In the meantime Fi has been going quite nicely.

But Dudley has been lame - most recently last weekend when we think we caught a bout of laminitis as it was starting. He's been confined to the sand school for the week and is on bute, but seemed to perk up quite quickly and neither vet nor farrier could find any obvious signs of either laminitis or abcess. (or anything else !)