Week 2 here we come! Fresh out of a successful first week, I was feeling confident and excited for the second week of Wilsonville. We started the week off as usual, in the 1.10 jumpers for warm-up. We played around with adding and subtracting strides in lines and taking more inside turns, it was a lot of fun and got me excited for the weekend. The weekend came and we were schooling Wesley differently than the week before, trying different methods to help him keep his legs up over the jumps and not hit the rails. The main method we used was for me to lean up his neck so he would have to really pick up his legs to lift my weight over the jump. This method worked really well and Wesley was being very careful. When we went into the ring, Wesley was really thinking about our school and was more backed off than I was used to. This caused my eye to be a little off and it really showed in the first class. Distances that were usually right on were showing up too long or too short and overall the picture was off. The next day we addressed this and found a happy medium with how we schooled. Saturday went much better and we got back into our groove. I learned that changes in how we school are great and beneficial, but too drastic changes at the last minute can hinder us more than help up.
The rest of the weekend went well besides one spook from Wesley on Sunday. He takes care of me so much and has been so good that it’s unreasonable to be upset about one spook over the course of the past four shows. Once again, I was lucky enough to work for Casey Sorita and Ross Alexander with Therapy Corner Store. Special thanks to them for continuing to let me work and learn from them to make my horse feel better. Thank you of course to my trainers Quinn Partridge, John Turner, and Gillian Baird for making this week successful and to my dad for making this week possible! Now one week at home and then back to Meadow Wood!