Winter weather has officially hit North Carolina (and seemingly a lot of other places too), so obviously, pretty much everything that can be closed is closed. And of course the problem with living in a house on a hill is that when said hill ices over, you’re pretty much stuck anyways. So if you want to find me, I’ll be in my sweatpants working from home the next couple days.

The upside to all this is that everytime I look outside I think of this…

… and therefore sing all four parts to my husband, complete with cheesy railroad noises. I like to think I’m adorable, but I’m probably just hurting my chances on getting that next blog post out of him. Whatevs snow snow Snow SNOW SNOW!!!

Before the ice storm hit, I was able to squeeze in a dressage lesson and discuss  the feedback from the clinic. Foster had a couple days off after the clinic, then a long stretchy session to work out any kinks, so even though I hadn’t dressaged yet since the clinic, it was still helpful.

Basically the lesson was a repeat of lessons before in that there was a lot of emphasis on transitions within and between gaits, lateral work in the form of shoulder and haunches in, and more work on our lengthenings. Foster’s still figuring these out to some degree, and part of how he is dealing with the added ‘pressure’ of the lengthening is to curl under, so I’m learning how to get his poll up and keep him going, or for now, come back to the walk then try again.

One of the most aggravating parts of my test was getting that 5.5 on the free walk, and so we worked on getting him to really take the extra stretch without rooting. Part of solving this problem includes my moving my hands towards his mouth (i.e, pushing my elbows to the fence!) so that he has even more ‘place’ to go. So obviously this is a feeling that I need to get the hang of in order to get the most out of my horse! Funny how habits transcend disciplines!