Slacker

Wow I have been a total slacker for the last 3 months!! Not only in blogging world, but in my life too. This has been quite a winter for us and has certainly put a kink in my developmental plans for the off-season. It's been cold, windy and most recently icy :(. I've been lucky if I ride twice a week right now and it's only b/c we are able to use Tracy and Matt's indoor. Well I'm seven weeks away from Morven and Seth cleared the ring for me last weekend and supposedly we are getting spring-like weather for the next week. So I'm motivated....at least I was until there were 20 mph winds today...yuck!! I rode Hobbs and Legacy anyway and had good rides on both of them. Here's an update on each of them..

Legacy - I haven't been doing too much progressive training, just trying different ulcer medications for maintenance and judging his mood. The plan is to go Training and potentially for Seth to take over the ride, so there's no rush with him. He has no issues with Training dressage and the jumping problems have nothing to do with training...just mental. So he's basically just been kept in enough work to keep him sane. Seth has been riding him sporadically to try and get some miles on him and get used to him. I have continued to work on getting him light and relaxed and using his hindend. He really does resist hard work, so it's a challenge to challenge him. He was full of it today and dug huge ditches in the ring galloping around on the longe line. He really is a sick freak though when he's amped up and does lengthenings...it was fun..hehe.

Hobbs - We spent a lot of November and December with him in the roundpen desensitizing him. He seems to be a lot better and really hasnt' had any major meltdowns except the other day when I was longeing him. He was amped up today and I was able to control him and get him calmed down enough to do quite nice dressage work. He's continued to be against my right rein and bulge his right shoulder...especially going to the left. I really need to get him straight so that when I'm doing jumping lines he doesn't wobble. The one time I had a combo set up in the indoor he was drifting right the entire time and really crooked...so that's definitley a huge hole that I need to fix. He's still an amazing jumper and has been sound and healthy all winter.

Mr. Cody Joe Step has pretty much been off and is fuzzy and fat and happy with life. When we do ride him he's perfectly happy to do whatever we ask and is so easy to have around. He balances out our other nutjobs...kinda ;).

So hopefully we are on our way to spring. I'm hoping to do a jumper show next weekend, but it's going to depend on the weather this week...keep your fingers crossed the weather forecast is accurate!!