Castle Troy & Sky Galante meet a new Trainer

It's been a very busy time here at CT Dressage, Lot's of riding & mucking out. The cold finally hit us hard on Friday evening. We had planned some lessons with a new trainer on Saturday & we where becoming more nervous that the arena might freeze.

Luckily the Arena didn't freeze so we continued as planned.

So are new trainer is Anna Brown of Anna Brown Dressage Ponies, Anna is based in Shropshire. Obviously we had the new trainer nerves, but Anna was lovely & i soon found she had a very good eye. She picked up on all our problems very quickly & soon set to work on them.

Galante was worked more up to the bridle, the contact has started to come behind so it was important to really show him he had to work up & into the bridle. We will keep working on this until he is 100% confident.

Troy is a very uphill horse who when allowed to will put a pretty picture across but will avoid working over the back. Anna saw this straight away & had me riding Troy's neck really out to the bridle, this worked a treat & he started to work over the back, however we both agreed he still could of worked even more over the back.

We also did some lateral work, Anna said she could tell Troy was an established Horse.

So we are continuing with the plan of Training, with a view to getting both horses out competing BD early on in the New Year.

Anna was great & we will be training with her again.

Now for the down side Unfortunately i was struck down a few months ago with Tennis Elbow, i was hoping it would be all cleared by now but due to not being able to rest it's just getting worse.

This is now impacting on my riding & was extremely painful to ride with on Saturday & to my astonishment i kept riding with the affected arm lower & lower with no feeling that i was doing this.

I kept wondering why the trainer kept picking up on it as it is not something Ive ever been picked up on before, but the Photo's soon showed the problem.

So I'm trying to have a week off from riding at least, we have Sally Cartwright our saddle fitter here on Tuesday so i will have to ride but for the rest of the week both horses will be lunged with my sort of good arm. Galante has a lesson booked in with Andrew Murphy on Thursday but will be ridden by Andrew & mucking out duties will be shared out with my brilliantly supportive mum when she can help.

Winter Training CT Dressage go Indoors

Where all settled into our winter routine here at CT dressage, it already feels like we've been mucking out endlessly.

Eavie our Yearling loves her winter routine she is the first at the gate to come in. She is the little princess of the group & my god does she live up to it. She is definitely destined to be a dressage diva.

Castle Troy is doing really well in his training & is starting to really come back to the standard we were at before the accident.

Our Oldies Sam & Murphy are all fluffy in their winter coats & chomping through Haylage at a rate of knots.

So onto our recent training, we took Galante our British Bred 4yo PRE for our monthly training clinic with Andrew Murphy. This was at a new venue & Indoors, Galante had never been in an Indoor before but I was confident he would take it all in his ever growing stride.
He did & despite being a little nervous having a few shouts he worked really well, i was very proud of my young horse.

We worked on Flexions of the Jaw, Jowel & neck this made Galante so even in both hands i felt like i could of ridden any movement with him.
At the end of our 1st session Andrew & I had a long discussion.

Andrew had realised I had Inner confidence issue's with my riding ability. I have a preset "Dressage Mode" which I go into when I’m riding in front of people or being taught.
This means I present what I believe to be a pretty picture & what i think others want to see, but i loose my effectiveness. In training I’m a great student & do everything I’m told but to the detriment of my riding.
Andrew quickly broke this down & really start to coach me through this issue, Andrew said he could tell i had bags of feel but i need to ride for me as I’m a beautiful rider.

So with all this taken on board I set off for our 2nd lesson with Andrew, this session was very different as Andrew only felt he had to be eye's on the ground. He wanted me to ride as I do at home.
I did this & it was a fabulous session, Andrew really liked what I did & how I corrected any niggles that were thrown at me from Galante. I felt at home in the environment that Andrew had created & we produced some of our best work to date. Towards the end we worked on & back in the trot, Galante really does have so many gears that are yet to be established it's very exciting. Andrew was shouting score's & each time we had a 9 :)
We now have the drive to make that score a 10 :)

At the end of the session Andrew congratulated me for my riding, he said I hadn’t ridden a wrong move at all & I had produced some wonderful work. I just need to keep riding for me & allow myself to be confident in my ability.

I find this hard as I have never been the most confident person, so it makes a lot of sense that I would take this lake of inner confidence to my riding. This is something I’m really going to focus on over winter.

Galante is now ready to go out & gain some competition experience so we will be choosing some venues to get out to over winter.

Keep an eye on our blog to find out how we go over Winter.

Dianne Breeze at CT Dressage

We had a fantastic morning yesterday when our long term trainer Dianne Breeze, BD trainer & listed judge came to train us.
First up was Sky Galante my 4yo PRE, we worked on making me more consistent & less wishy washy with his contact. By the end of his session he was going brilliantly & i was riding more like my old self.
It was great having Dianne's finely tuned eye on us, It was also Dianne's first time meeting are baby PRE & she paid him some wonderful compliments.
We really do have a star in the making with this one.

Next up was Castle Troy my 11yo KWPN, this was Troy's first training session since his injury so it was quite a momentous moment. Troy loved every second, we worked on suppling & by the end of the session Troy felt great. He even felt it was appropriate to show me he still remembers how to do a change when my inside leg wrongly slipped a bit to far back.
Since coming back from his injury he feels better than ever.

It was a very enjoyable morning & one we hope to repeat.

Please keep checking our blog as we will keep you up to date with our Training progress & 2012 competitions.

Merry's new hair cut

It's been a very busy w-end here at CT Dressage, it's clipping time & i had put it off long enough.
I finally managed to get Troy & Galante clipped on Saturday, we also managed to fit in a clipping Lesson to one of my clients.

On Sunday we had my clients horse Merry come for a Clip & lesson. She now looks super smart. Both Gail & Merry had a super lesson after i had clipped her keep up the good work guys.

Dianne Breeze comes to CT dressage

We are hopefully having a visit from Dianne Breeze later this month, it has been over a year since we last saw her & we have really missed training with her.
We have had a lot of changes here at CT Dressage & i can't wait to have a couple of training sessions with Sky Galante & Castle Troy.
Dianne now lives in the UAE, Dianne & her young horse Belissimo Vita are taking the UAE dressage scene by storm.

Castle Troy returns to work

After a full years break due to a serious injury. Troy has made a remarkable recovery & will be staying Barefoot as are all of the CTD Horses.