April Showers Bring May Flowers

Well, not flowers perhaps, but a bunch of new followers!  I was very excited to see that my best friend from college shared my blog on hers.  She has a bunch of followers and gets to do the things that I wish I could do.  The barn I ride at doesn't have trails and since he is more of a show horse, I don't always get to do all the fun things she gets to do.  I would love to go gallop in an open field and really see how big he can run.  Although, with my luck, Ronin would rip off a shoe in all of the excitement.

I just wanted to say hi to everyone and welcome you to my blog.  Ronin and I have a bit of a break from showing and our next show will be in the middle of June.  May was quite busy for both of us and we could both use a break.

After showing in the TOC, I will be working on doing work off tests for fun just to keep both of our skills up.  On Monday, I hacked Ronin in the outdoor ring and practiced doing some lateral work.  Some of the tests at TOC that pretty much no one completed well were doing simple changes of lead down a rail and a turn on the haunch.  So, I practiced those!  Ronin was great.  We did three simple changes of lead through the walk down the straight line and he nailed every one.  When you do three simple changes, you end on the counter canter, so I held them though the turn, did a half turn in reverse (where you come off the rail and roll back into it) and did three more simple changes down the long side.  Happy to say that he was great, did every change clean and held the counter canter like a pro.  Then did some turn on the haunches and I made sure that they were at a walk and he did not go backward and kept his hind feet moving.

I was also inspired from watching the Rolex Three day (a number of weeks ago) and was very keen on the turn on the haunch they were doing and how critical it was to keep the horse's hind end engaged.  The commentators were great and gave a ton of critique and praise on what was well done and what needed work.

I will attempt to keep posting about what we are working on and the prep we will be going through to keep Ronin in showing shape.  Yesterday, when I went to the barn to ride, Ronin had decided that he wanted to be a palomino instead of a grey.  His whole body was yellow from rolling in the sand!