One of the hardest things I've found this year is balancing time and money. Having to work full time to be able to comfortably pay the bills, pay for Legacy's livery and have some money to buy food and day to day items.

Working full time for the money to pay to keep Legacy and pay the bills means less time to spend with Legacy, Putting you right in a catch 22 situation. Obviously during the summer the days are longer I can find a bit more time to do more with Legacy before the winter time hits and it becomes the same routine everyday of wake up, head to the yard to put the horses out, and off to work. Depending on the time of winter and if it's light enough around 5, I will help my mum get them in after work.

Legacy hasn't been ridden since before Christmas last year and now I'm buying presents for Christmas this year it's actually scaring me how much little time I've had for her this year so far. After my Granny died in February we moved house in the April, the landlord wanted to freshen up the house before we moved in but we'd booked time off work to move and due to the last person moving out late we said If we can move that week we'll do the decorating of the house. After starting that we realised it wasn't going to be a quick job of just painting over the paper on the walls, the paper needed to be stripped off. Turns out there was 2 layers of wall paper in the living room. That room isn't even 100% finished now, after doing the bathroom we started our room which is only getting close to finished now and then the kitchen still needs doing.

To add to all this we got our first dog in the April too to add to our family of us two and the cat, then a kitten came along and about a month to two months ago we got a puppy. Having the elder cat and dog was fine as they didn't demand much time, but with the kitten and puppy obviously being babies they need you more. 

These are just some of the things that life throws at you, that you don't think of when people say get a horse. Now that the kitten is now 6 months old and the puppy is now just over 4 months old, they're used to just fitting in with the other 2 and I'm able to get out more and not have to worry about them being at home as much. Saying that I'm also hoping to organise my time as lot more now, as I've been having a diary throughout the year and I've tried diary's before and this is the longest I've kept on top of one and it's getting me much more organised in general. I just need to get my time management a bit better and to get the motivation to get up when I'm doing nothing at home and do more with Legacy. I've also been put off quite a bit by having just Legacy and Cloudy in the field together so at the start of the summer if one of them came in so did the other but it had to be rushed so the other didn't panic, and the way Legacy can act in the school when it comes to work also put me off work so when it came to possibly adding the 2 together I didn't have any motivation to do anything with her. 

I walked her over poles the other day when my mum was also in the arena on Cloudy, so we're getting back into it. I tried to run with her in a trot over the poles but she was a bit keen with her trot which she tried to turn into canter but unfortunately I had to stop her as I only had a lead rope. Next time I do this with her I'm going to use a lunge line instead and hopefully doing something different with make her less difficult when it comes to me getting back on board.

The Trams Lines Exercise

Yes those lines in the image are poles, it was the best I could work up after forgetting to take a picture of the actual poles. Although this is something I might try doing in the future with pole work posts, then add in a picture of the actual poles too. If it came up to a more complicated exercise to explain I will be able to add in arrows etc to show which way we went.

What we did with the poles:

Throughout a circle that took up half of the arena we set out 3 pairs of poles. One in the middle of the arena (orange),  one by the entrance gate (blue) and the other in between them too (green). 

The exercise was to then go through the poles and around In a circle or oval depending on which two sets of poles we were going through. In this lesson I hadn't done any work with Legacy since the lesson the week before so on the rare occasion she was a little lively (she can normally go awhile without work and be fine when you get back on.) this toyed with my confidence a little and I'm going to be honest there was a few times I was ready to throw the towel in and say I wanted to get off.

Thankfully I had put my big girl breeches on that day and I fought through it. 

Before using the 2 outer sets of poles we did a few exercises between the blue and green sets of poles. At this point I was fine confidence wise with Legacy. 

Some of the exercises we did were:

- Go through the blue set of poles and then through the green set.

- Go through the blue set of poles and either go on the a inside or the outside of the set of green poles.

- Same as above but opposite way around. Going through the green set and either way around the blue set. 

These exercises were done on both reins. 

After that we started to incorporate the orange set of poles. Were we would do big circles from blue through orange and smaller ones in between of orange and green then blue and green.

It took us pretty much the whole lesson to get a nice rhythmic trot out of Legacy this day as she was very much running in her trot. My Instructor was very determined to get a nice trot out of her before the end of the lesson and to end the lesson on a nice trot aswell.

When we started to incorporate the orange poles was when Legacy started to heat up a little. I hadn't been this far down in the arena with her for a while as we'd been working in the top quarter to half in 20m circles and on a square/rectange that way I could always have a good amount of control of her.

The control when she starts to heat up is definitely a communication error rather than her needing another bit, something not fitting correctly, her not being happy etc. As when she does heat up my first Instinct is to stiffen and tense up and pull back on the reins slightly. Now I know that both of these are something I need to work on. In terms of the pulling on the reins this is also something we worked on in the lesson as the instructor told me to try intermittently slightly pull on each rein and that if she doesn't go off on me to send her into the arena fence a little by turning her head. I did manage to find some control of her by trying these out and maybe we'll get there when I stop stiffening up. 

We're Back On Track...

The last 2 days I've ridden Legacy and I've managed to do more than just sit on her or walk her around in circles on the spot. Yesterday was just your average schooling session in the arena with my mum on Cloudy. I started out the session by trying out some starting suggestions I got over on facebook through the equestrian bloggers group and she was just doing the usual of stopping and throwing her head when she doesn't want to work. 

After feeling inspired from the comments over there I seen a whip on the side of the school and decided to give it another try. I never typically use whips on her as she must've had somewhat of a bad experience with them in the past as whenever you give her a tap on the bum to back up the leg she will try to kick your leg as to say 'get off'. So knowing that I decided to just show her the whip, and it actually worked. I didn't have to hit her with in once, she knew it was there. Each time I felt she was going to slow down I would just show her the whip and she go back to working. There was a few head throws in the beginning but when she got into a rhythm she would work nicely. Even at the end of the session I asked her for a little canter on each rein, which we both have to work on very much as more as ground work before ridden but it was nice to have a little canter on her which we haven't been able to do for about the last 6 months.

In today's lesson she tried to start off a little slow but there was no stopping and no head throwing as usual. In the lesson today we worked on a big 20m circle then smaller ones at certain parts of the bigger circle. This was so we could help Legacy become more supple from her left side on the right rein and so she doesn't flick her back end out on the left rein. As she flicks her back end out on the right rein she's not sure what to do with her back legs as she's turning corners within the circle, she's kicking herself with her back legs which results in her stumbling and then having to correct herself. This now means that she has to wear boots on her back legs. This isn't too much of a major problem as I've gotten her used to having boots on her back legs, she can just try to swipe her legs at times to try and get them off, once the first velcro is done she's fine. This is just something I've got to watch with her. 

Didn't manage to get any pictures from the lesson so I've added these in to break it all up.

The Horse That Hates Schooling...

As a follow up from my previous post the magic halter where I talked about Legacy's manners and her stubbornness. I'm happy to say she is now a dream on the ground, she'll happily walk into her stable even if I stop and then ask her to come in. I've even tried this is a general nylon headcollar with no pressure points and she's a different horse.

Due to the training of this she's had pretty much 2 months off work, just being in the field getting fat and coming in for grooms when Cloudy comes in. We're still not 100% on being on our own in the stable, but again we're making progress with that. 

The other day I decided that enough time off was enough, it's the summer and I wanted to ride while I still could, soon as they come in at night time the amount of riding I can get done is down to my 2 days off and I have to hope the weather is on my side or nothing gets done. 

So I took her down to the arena for a little 15-20 minute school. The first 5 minutes of starting to work she's fine and this is the same every time, there might be the odd time where she's happy to work longer than 5 minutes but it's never any less that this.

After the time she's happy working, it all stops. She's very rarely does anything bad it's mostly she just stops and decides to plant herself there, whenever I try something to get her working it usually results in her throwing her head up as if she's saying no!

I have tried many different ways to get her back working. 

I've tried:

Squeezing her 

Kicking her (although I can't give her a good kick cause she tried to kick my food then)

Using a whip (which she also tries to kick)

Using a whip whop (which doesn't work cause it's too soft)

Circling her one way then trying to walk her forward the other way 

& Using my reins on her like I would the whip whop, this works but only for a step or 2 then we're at it again.

I've tried doing transitions with her in my warm up to get her 'into' working, but that just results in a small fight getting her to move on after asking her to walk. I can get a nice trot out of her after she's warmed up and at times I'll get a little explosion of wanting to canter when I ask for trot, these days I can get her working nice when she's worked through the 'explosions'. I've had to stop cantering her due to her not being balanced in it just yet as I'm trying to get her more balanced and working well in the other paces first but I'm not getting anywhere. 

I just find it so frustrating as all I want to go is get on her and be able to school her and learn new things together, like movements and jumping. 

The head position in the picture blow is how she holds her head when she's first in trot before she relaxes.

She often gets her back check, she has her teeth done yearly and she's recently had a new saddle, I've even tried changing her bit. So I've ruled out all of the physical aspects of any pain or problems. 

If there is anything anyone would suggest I could try to try and work through this please let me know.

 I can't school her out on the road hacking as she is the same on the road, when she doesn't want to move on she won't and this can result in her being in the middle of the road having a moment. So not only does she hate schooling, there's no hacking at the moment either.