Happy New Year

Happy New Year Everyone. I have had a luverly week!!! :-) I have two FAB-U-LOUS rides in the forest. The first was with Kristina and Oscar. I soooo enjoyed it!! We 'happy hacked' which basically means that we walked, trotted and cantered as much as we liked. Spyke had to deal with a few 'challenges' though. The first was a very large mud puddle. Spyke is good at water but doesn't 'do' mud and refused to go through the puddle. That was fine as there was a track around it. It was covered in tree roots and small mud puddles and once Spyke saw that he got all anxious and worried and his little knees actually trembled as he tippy toed carefully, with his eyes almost shut across the tree roots and through the puddles. Funnily enough, after that, he was quite happy just to go through the puddles. The next challenge was a tree across the track. It was about knee height. He stood and looked at it for a bit while Kristina and I were working out what we were going to do and then the little sweetheart, once again with trembly knees, carefully stepped over it followed by Oscar (who never batted an eyelid). Challenge three was two deer. We had just settled into a lovely canter on one of our favourite tracks when two deer popped out to our right about 15 meters away. I just had time to shout 'Deer!!' and jam my heels down before Spyke spotted them. He slammed on the anchors and shot left over the bank and through the trees. Suddenly he realised that he was 'off-piste' which is not his thing at all. He scrambled back to the track and managed to stand looking sheepish while I tried to recompose myself for the next five minutes as riding while doubled over laughing is not easy. It was a great ride!!

The next day I had a bubbles ride with Martina and discovered that being slightly squiffy dramatically improves one's lower leg. :-) It was another fab ride.

Yesterday Martina, Tina and I went to the New Year races at Ellerslie. It was really, really hot but there was a nice breeze that was just enough to stop me from boiling. I took my usual $20 which lasted me till the second to last race. I picked two winners and had placings in most races so it was a great day.

This afternoon I took the girls for a walk in the forest. It was so hot and muggy. The dogs swam and swam and I ditched the sneakers and joined them in the stream for a paddle. I was really chuffed as last night I managed to REALLY get stuck into Brina's undercoat and knots so her coat was looking quite good today. I've still got a lot of grooming to do to get rid of the knots she collected while I was away.

I rode Spyke this evening as it was too hot in the afternoon. This evening I discovered his 'forward' button. We did some Rein-back to trot and some walk to canter. My word he has a fantastic canter when he is using himself properly. Trouble is, now that I have 'foward' I don't know how to get collected. Oh well, it gives me plenty to work on.