Well, today was supposed to be the day that I moved out of my lovely house in London and made my way back down to Dorset once more. Sadly, as we all know the Beast from the East has ruined everyone’s plans this week, so I am still in said lovely house and getting ever more impatient to get going with mine and Freya’s training again. The silver lining of all this is that I finally get some time to resurrect this blog while watching Lier CDI on ClipMyHorse.tv – when life gives you lemons…
If you haven’t been keeping up with my updates on social media, you won’t know that I recently made the huge decision to leave my London job and dedicate some more time to riding and coaching. The last two years have been incredible – definitely one of the most exciting and fascinating experiences of my life – but I found myself longing to dedicate the time to my dreams again. It was a tough decision but it’s definitely the right one.
Freya has had a really productive winter of training. Claire Moir has been helping us hugely, and we’re making real progress. It’s taking her a bit of time to get her head around the canter pirouettes when I ask for them smaller, but we’re slowly getting there and I hope we can start tackling some Small Tour shows very shortly.
We have qualified for our third Nationals together, which is really exciting. We’ll be taking part in the Advanced Medium Gold Freestyle at Hartpury, and I’m keeping everything crossed for a wild card in the straight Advanced Medium Gold. She’s much more established at this level now so I’ve got to give myself a kick up the backside and be a bit braver about what I ask from her. It’s all there for the taking but I tend to ride a bit too safe for the higher scores. I have been really careful with her because she could very quickly get tense and tight, but I think we’re in a good position now to go for more.
So, for now, I sit and wait in London until the snow passes. That said, Dad walked three miles down to the yard this morning, so things could be worse! I am itching to get going . Hopefully, the snow will clear and I’ll be on my way back to Dorset very soon.