One of my aims for last year was to get Legacy doing the online dressage competitions in the ROR & beginners classes, unfortunately this was not something we managed to reach by autumn time when the ROR classes finished. This is now something I have rolled over to this year and my new aim is to get her ready over the rest of winter and start adding her to the classes some spring in the march - may months depending on how we're getting on. 

With this being our main aim for the year the other aim I'm wanting to do which can make the online dressage seem simple compared is to get Legacy's canter sorted this year, I'm going to be looking up loads of schooling exercises for when I'm riding and for us to do on the ground to get her balanced and holding herself in canter. Over the last couple of years it's been her trot that we've been establishing getting her being able to work into a rhythm. Outlines aren't something I'm majorly fussed about at this point with her, I'd rater her come down into an outline when she's happy rather than add on loads of gadgets and force her into one. There have been signs of her lowering her head and coming into somewhat of an outline once we've established a nice rhythm in a 20m circle trot, so I'm happy with this for now. As I said the main aim is now to get her canter balanced on both reins and have her working happily. 

Legacy's been having a nice rest over Christmas and the New Year as I'm finding it hard to get any motivation to ride in this cold weather, Not being able to feel my toes is not my idea of a fun or relaxing ride. Unfortunately the lack of motivation to ride has resulted in the lack of motivation to blog, hence why I've been MIA for a few weeks but both horses are getting their backs done Tuesday to have a fresh check over on everything. I'm really hoping with that and now writing this blog post I will get my riding and blogging mojo's back.

But we're on the up as the night's are getting longer and the morning's are getting lighter earlier. It won't be long before I'm putting the horses out to the sunrise at 7:30am soon.

My Aim by the End of Summer

Now that I'm back having lessons on Legacy every other week I think it's time that I give myself some goals to complete by the end of the summer.

The first big thing I'd like to do at the end of summer or possibly half way through and then again at the end to see if there's any improvement would be online dressage. I've seen that there's a few websites that offer this with a range of classes. I would love to enter Legacy into some of the ex racehorse classes I've seen. The classes that I would choose would only probably include walk and trot as we've still got quite a bit to work on with canter, but you never know there's still quite a bit of time until the end of summer. 

One of the best things about this is that I will be able to still compete with Legacy while not having to leave the yard. I find this is one of the hardest things for me to do at the moment, as Legacy won't travel on her own and Cloudy won't travel unless he's in a 7.5 ton horsebox and it's hard to find one of them around here to hire. Although my main aim with Legacy isn't to be out competing it would be nice to be able to do something small on her every once in awhile. 

Another aim I have to do by the end of the summer is to be back riding Cloudy, this is also another big one for me as I hate knowing that a fall has got the better of me with losing my confidence with him. I'm really hoping that with getting my confidence a lot better while on Legacy I will be able to transfer it over onto him and he won't feel any tension from me. I'm hoping that when I get back on him it will be like the fall never happened, okay I will be wary with him but I'm hoping that if he starts to play up with me that I will be able to sort him out and then he'll know that he'll get told off and made to work harder when he starts to play up and won't get away with it any more. Who know's I might start doing online dressage competitions on him too. 

I'm only setting myself 2 goals to achieve by the end of the summer because they are both pretty big ones. All my efforts will be put into achieving these and once these are done I will be able to set myself some more.