And now the weather...

Riding up here has come to a complete stand-still right now.  With my leg now on the mend, I was going to start getting back into my riding with Koda, starting some easy hacks around the property, venturing out on the roads when I have a riding buddy.  Of course, the moment I am healed enough to get back in the saddle, we get a huge weather system moving through.  It has rained every. single. day. for the past five days.  It's great for the pastures and the farmers, but darn it!  Why couldn't it just rain overnight instead of during the day?  Either way, there has been plenty of giving scritches and scratches and hanging out in the field, but no riding as of yet.

In any case, I have the last post of the Kathy Playdon clinic.  On this last day we set up a nice mini course to go through.  With the feedback and tips I got from the previous days, I knew (and still know!) that I need to work on always moving FORWARD, and getting Koda in front of my leg no matter what we're doing.  We had our game faces ON and were ready to go!

Before the course, we did an exercise that I've wanted to do but have not done yet, and that's set up poles that you can trot over to help with either a shortened stride or lengthen stride.  I say shorten since I know Koda and I are not ready to do any true collected work yet, and most likely won't be for at least a year.  It was a great exercise for Koda and I, although we need to spend some more time our lengthening!

The course was a fairly simple one with some bending lines and the coop from the day before.  I rode the bending lines slightly conservatively since I know Koda isn't naturally inclined to do flying changes, so I opted for the quick simple changes instead.  After watching the videos, I realized that I really should have just gone for it and done the canter and try for the changes!  But this is why I LOVE doing clinics and having video to watch and learn from.

I have to thank one of the pony club moms that did the video taping for me this day.

Up next - New venues to discover!