~Lisa's Corner~
We are right on the verge of a major break through – I can just taste it! Since my lesson with Lesley about 3 weeks ago where I finally got the “round and connected” thing down, I have been working on jumping again. We actually haven’t jumped since October!! That’
~Lisa's Corner~
Did you know that history repeats itself? Sometimes it takes decades or centuries – for me it took a week and a half. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". If I had paid attention the first time around my ride today would have ended a
~Lisa's Corner~
Twenty-twelve! That’s fun to say, isn’t it? God willing, twenty-twelve is going to be the year of my and High Cotton’s big eventing debut! It will be my second competition – I did one after my first event but the cross country phase was rained out so I
~Lisa's Corner~
Awesome ride today! Our disciplined conditioning is beginning to show and we have moved on to fine tuning our goals – yay for progress! The fact that it was a drop-dead gorgeous day didn’t hurt either – yay for living in the South! Now that I can get Cotton round on
~Lisa's Corner~
During the Thanksgiving break my thoughts turned to how I was going to make the most of the 5 months remaining in Cotton’s conditioning program. Lesley’s little 2 sentence lesson the day before about getting him connected is what started it… I re-evaluated my goals: 1) Get Cotton
~Lisa's Corner~
What a difference a brief conversation can make! My ride on Cotton had been pretty bad – he just wasn’t listening to me! I decided to end our torture session to go walk the steep hill. We were up to 7 times. I knew I could at least do that
~Lisa's Corner~
Lesley proved to me that when Cotton is ridden correctly, he goes correctly – I’ve seen it with my own eyes when she's schooled him for me! So, my new philosophy is that instead of worrying so much about what Cotton is doing, I am concentrating on what
~Lisa's Corner~
Well, quite a bit has happened since my last post! The nitty-gritty of it all is 3-fold. 1 – After a brief discussion with Lesley, we agreed that Cotton’s canter is just not going to get any better until his hind end – especially his left hind – gets stronger. We will
~Lisa's Corner~
During my talk with Lesley she had suggested that I canter some figure eights with a simple change of lead in preparation for approaches to jumps off of turns in the canter. So, not being one to ever disobey my riding instructor, that’s what we did on Thursday. After
~Lisa's Corner~
Hey! Remember me? I’m back!! It took Cotton a total of three weeks to fully recover from his raucous in the pasture. I only rode 6 days during the entire month of September! Not only was Cotton lame but I helped two of my family members go though a
~Lisa's Corner~
Wow – it’s really been three weeks since my last report! That’s because nothing noteworthy has happened and it’s hard to make “nothing” sound interesting, as you will discover from reading today’s post! I have discovered the pattern to my progress, however and did make some gains
~Lisa's Corner~
My word for today was “composure”. Lesley has taught me the correct techniques to ride Cotton successfully and now I need to work on my ability to consistently apply the right technique at the right time in the right way. That takes poise and confidence on my part. I was
