How are those goals coming along?

Well. Um.

Things just keep happening.

But despite that, we’re halfway there.

Remember I said Aero was cough free in my last post? Well, he was cough free for five days and then, on Thursday, he was coughing again. Not as bad as previously, but definitely coughing. We worked away on our Practical Horsemanship test anyway. It’s all gentle stuff and won’t aggravate his cough in any way. I even rode him, for the first time since November – again, just gentle stuff. Mostly walk, with stretching, leg-yielding, and shoulder-in and a little trot on each rein. And I felt great – totally with him, and very strong and stable in my upper body. Yes! I though. All this yoga is paying off! Um… yeah… Read on…

My plan was to record the Practical Horsemanship video for our Interdressage entry on Saturday, but I checked the weather forecast and found that Saturday was going to be rainy. Thankfully, the LSH was free for a while on Friday afternoon, so I went up to the stables before him, groomed Aero (read : transferred dust, straw and grit from his body to mine), went up to the arena and started to work on our weaknesses. And then…

Right before the LSH arrived, my back went “HELLLLLOOOOOOO!!!” and spasmed in a most unhelpful way. I think it was in sympathy with my mother, who had a fall this week and hurt her own back (Hi Mom!) Anyway, I was just barely able to run around while Aero trotted, and we did succeed in making a video of our Practical Horsemanship test at liberty. Hooray! We did a trial run beforehand – Aero and I doing the same test routine, but on the lead rope – which I’m posting here. You will notice that our trot is very sedate indeed, and my back is extremely straight throughout! AND I struggle to pick up the schooling whip at one stage!

All in all, I suspect that my ridden test is not going to happen, so it looks like I’ll just have a 50% success rate this month.

Anyway, here’s our trial run video. It’s not perfect, you can see that our ‘reverse around a corner’ is weak, but I am very pleased to see how happily Aero follows with a totally slack lead rope. He wasn’t this good last year! However, I will go on the record here and say that the competition video is a good deal weaker, but at least I achieved my goal of performing the routine with him at liberty.