# Leaps and bounds!



## Prinella (Jul 12, 2011)

This is long I apologise 

Well I had an interesting split from my Boss/ Bo/ Trainer/ Friend last year about october. I do not deny that she helped me explicitly at some points but towards the end she was doing less and less. She'd been in a mental health facility for psychosomatic illness. Thats when the body thinks its sick in short. 
She disagreed with the diagnosis and it got a bit hairy for a while. I eventually had to get out.

Another friend living there had had a large falling out with her she was the other person running the business while the boss was in hospital. She had moved with her horses to a property literally 700m up the road. 

I took my horses there and since then feel I've come leaps and bounds. 

MY greenie Ella is now popping over jumps (shes 6) and cantering happily. We went through a bad patch until i built the arena. I didn't have the confidence to be working with her alone in the 18acre paddock with other loose horses. Arena fixed that. 

UNfortunately she's scored some time off. Our ground is that hard she ended up with a swollen tendon on one leg and an old splint acting up on the other. Not sure which came first. I'd been thinking that it was the jumping until I realised I'd not ridden her in the two weeks before she got sore. That and popping over a crate high jump 8 times a week shouldn't cause that. 

Most importantly the dangerous mare I brought with me is now a puppy dog. I was the only one who could rug her / feed her. anyone else she'd kick out and simply be dangerous. Now anyone can walk up to her and pat her. I walk through the paddock with a feed bucket and she trots at my shoulder will not dare to touch it. Just a huge attitude adjustment. 

Prin and I have also come along way. Wile she was coming back in to work with arthritis we'd done alot of relaxation work and I'd gotten stuck in that rut trying to turn her into a quiet plodder. I now realise it's not her. She's 17 I haven't got that many years left with her and its not the end of the world if she's a little quick.

I knew she had issues with her mouth so I had been working pretty much only in a halter. I realised of course that it was a valid strategy but if i want to do anything with her, clinics, hunting, shows etc she was going to have to cope with a bit. Of course still working on the relaxation and I'm starting to get some nice work out of her. 

I'm slowly getting my confidence back after having done minimal jumping for 2 years (arthritis, injury, arthritis ). having the float has meant I and a student can go out to open PC grounds and play on the XC course basically if she could do it I could do it, not telling her that though 

We're hunting at the moment, jumped my first panel yesterday, in a dressage saddle ( 2 hours sleep means i grabbed the wrong saddle.) A little nervy, but of course super pony was fine. 

We had an XC lesson the other week with a block from the hunt club, jumps I'd looked at a month before with my student and wondered how the hell you'd tackle that we went over. My first xc lesson in 3 years definitely helped. I spent the night drinking beer on the balcony and looking at her thinking "what a beautiful creature"

Have 2 hunter training days coming up, and doing 2 days of eventing clinics. I've picked up a lesson client $120 for an hour and a half for her 3 young girls every week. in my eyes that's lesson money


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