The Brego Blog Wins Fame

I apologize to everyone for being a bad blogger.

I am at the end of a release cycle at work, which means evening and weekends belong to the Other Life. I did manage to ride Brego twice this week, once working on dressage and once on jumping. I did not go to the hunt this weekend, because it was an "away game" which is about a 3 hour drive to the joint meet. It is also a live hunt (coyote) and I wasn't sure if I was up for that. I am truly a conflicted animal lover/pacifist/red meat-eater/fox hunter.

My friend in Texas sent me some Phillipe Karl dvds and I have thoroughly enjoyed learning about how much I don't understand how to train. :) Just kidding, it's been very educational to see other horses progressing by a much estemmed professional and doing the conversion in my head for Brego. Let's see, if that gorgeous perfectly balanced, perfectly relaxed warmblood stallion in the video takes 3 oz of pressure to shoulder-in from the trot, that means.... carry the one... multiply by "Draft Constant"... divide by "Green Coefficient"... to make Brego do the same thing should take... 3 oz of pressure. Wow, I am way behind on my homework!

Brego really enjoyed the in-hand session and I found him much more responsive when I finally got into the saddle. I need to remind myself to start with advanced in-hand work more often.

As for the jumping day, I set up some small fences, about 2' high and just worked on a consistant canter and counting my strides. I really need to train my eye better. I found that I could count accurately from about 4 strides out and if I didn't see it then, I would see something bad at 2 strides and think "Oh shit, we've blown it". So I really need to get better at seeing it at, say 6, and then if I don't see it, do something about it.

I then set up a 2' 9" course and worked on rollbacks. We have a fun show this weekend hosted by my barn and Brego will be in the 3' jumpers class (and costume class). He was a star and I could tell that the counting helped that round as well. I am trying not to overanalyze my position which is Step 3 in my Twelve Step Program of "Enjoying Your Horse. Here. Now."! I did feel more secure and reading the technical aspects of the course helped me to keep back and get deep distances for tight turns. I heard from spectators that I looked much better, so I am going to run with that! :)

But the real reason for this post is that the Brego Blog has been so lucky as to receive a wonderful award from a very cool blog that I have just discovered: Baba Yaga's Mirror.

There are so many really great blogs out there about horses that to choose five would be difficult. I will need to give it some thought and get back to posting about it.

Two more weeks until the big move to Brego Farms so things will continue to be a little hit or miss on the blog. I fully intend to document any fun outings, but the posts may slow down for the next couple of weeks. Better grab hold, this could be a bumpy ride!