May and June were busy having lessons with Jody and Julie, working on everything we learned through the season and starting to think about what we want to do next season. Jody gave Tech a fab tune up and was really pleased with how his lateral work is progressing. I hopped on and had a great ride, and worked through our shoulder in, leg yield, travers and pirouettes! I never dreamed I would be able to say I'd covered all of those movements in a lesson... so so exciting! I'm so proud of Techy for picking it all up, and so appreciate all the hard work Jody has put in to train and refine the aids and Tech's response to get them to a point where I can apply them easily! It feels so awesome!!
Next up was a lesson with Julie to work on my position. Each lesson with Julie feels like another huge step forward in my stability and "usefulness" in the saddle. Julie has a great eye to pick out each element of my riding and position that needs work, and has an amazing ability to pinpoint exactly where my weakness is and how we can work to fix it bearing in mind my muscle weaknesses.
This time it was my thighs! She noticed that due to my hip and leg weakness, I can't roll my thighs in to stay in contact with the knee roll and saddle - they just flop outwards which then points my toes out too. So now we have another step in the pre-flight checklist when I get on Tech... Flaps Out! :) My ground crew have to put their hand up under my thigh from behind, fine the thigh muscle and pull it back so my knee rolls inwards. It's really interesting that my right side is my stronger side, but it's my left that stays in place longer once it's been put there! It's probably because I've been riding that way for so long that muscle memory is protesting and being my stronger side, is pulling my thigh back out more on my strong side than on my weak side where my leg just hands more. All really interesting stuff and it definitely felt much more secure with my thighs in the new position!
HOWEVER... I totally felt the ill-effects of having my legs in a totally new position for 20 minutes after I got off and my hips were in agony that night! I slapped on the Savvy Touch Cooling Gel and took my E3 Live Blue Majik tablets and managed to ride again the next two days without feeling completely dead! ;) I've been taking E3 Live AFA and Blue Majik tablets for a few months now and have definitely noticed a faster recovery time after hard rides which is awesome yay! Thanks heaps for putting me onto it Steve and Lindsay from Savvy Touch!
The RDA National Training Conference was held in Tauranga in May, and Nicola and I put together a presentation for the Friday afternoon session to give an overview of how current RDA riders could make the step into competing at Para Equestrian. It was quite nerve-wracking getting up in front of a room full of RDA coaches, staff and volunteers, but Nic and I managed to tag team the presentation pretty well and we got some good feedback. Hopefully it results in some more riders joining our Para family! Thanks to RDA for having us, and to Sally for great support and video skills :)
Tech got his second clip of the season thanks to Bex's skilled hands! He's sporting some cute stars on his bum this winter - they're the talk of the Tauranga horsey world apparently hehe! Thanks heaps as always Bex! xx
With the nights getting darker earlier now and the weather getting a bit more wintery, I found myself at home with Mum one night in front of the fire going through a box of old photos. There were some gems in there that's for sure! Here's a few not quite so embarrassing ones...
This is Tommy - the first horse I ever competed in dressage on! Yep - I've always had a thing for pintos! I used to ride him every weekend at the riding school I used to go to. I rode him for about a year and we rode our first prelim test together at Shipham Equestrian Centre in the UK. I also used to hack him out over the Mendip Hills - he was a very cool dude!
This is Sophie - she was my first horse. I was 12 years old here. My FSHD hadn't progressed much at this point, and I could ride like any normal person! The only thing I couldn't do was mount from the ground! :) Sophie was a 15 year old Arab x TB who was the typical grumpy mare who pulled faces whenever you got close to her stable door! She hadn't had any schooling and used to trot and canter along like a giraffe, but I loved my grumpy mare and we had a lot of fun together! Unfortunately she died after I'd had her about 9 months which was quite traumatic... I was lunging her one day and adjusting her side reins - she was jigging around like she usually did (she could never stand still!) and all of a sudden she reared up and fell backwards and never got up. The vet said she had a brain heamorrage and I was devastated I lost my best mate.
After Sophie died, we bought Conker - a typical welsh cob gelding. He was so cute - he looked just like a Conker! In between Sophie and Conker, I rode a few different horses at the riding school and had a couple of bad falls out hacking a 17hh gelding called Jimmy. He was a gentle giant but often (I found out!) got excited hacking out in a group and could fire a decent buck which unfortunately I just couldn't sit to. So I'd lost a lot of confidence and Conker seemed like the safe gentleman to look after me and restore my confidence again. But we just didn't click and I didn't feel safe on him, despite the fact he'd never done anything wrong. So we sold him and I started riding at my local RDA group which was closer to home than my old riding school.
My next superstar mount was another pinto - Spud! He was an even chunkier cob than Tommy and he was such a gentle, gorgeous soul. I competed at the RDA Regional Championships on Spud - probably would have been around 1995 ish? We came 2nd in both our tests and qualified for the National RDA Championships, but I had a big school trip to France the same week which I had already booked into, so unfortunately we didn't make it. This was the last competition I rode before having a 12 year break from riding.
And the rest as they say, is history...!