Updates!

This past week has been busy but the best kind of busy, with just enough to do each day to stay engaged and motivated. I often find it hard to find my rhythm in the summer--one week I am traveling, the next week I am working, and then the next I have little to do. I know that is a bit of a luxury, but I need goals and activities to stay motivated! My MICA class has really helped with that as I have been working 3-5 hours in the studio several days a week. It looks like I will have a few more days to work than expected--hooray!

Caesar and I had 3 fabulous bareback dressage rides this week. I think doing my flatwork sans saddle might be just the thing we need right now. I get so tangled up in my saddle and don't really sink in and find my seat. But when riding bareback, I have to find and utilize my seat or Caesar runs away or stops. Ha. I also find I do better lateral work bareback. This week we achieved some really good canter sets. Cantering bareback has never been the problem, it's the up and down transitions where I clamp my legs and throw my body forward and bounce up and down. Yikes! But we improved by leaps and bounds this week! Still room to grow for sure, but we are on our way. And we jumped a few crossrails bareback, another one of my summer goals! I do think that my lower leg is getting more stable. My jump lesson on Friday went very well; we jumped a simple gymnastic--a vertical with a placing pole before and after to a cross rail on a figure 8. By the end of the lesson, the vertical was up to 3 feet! Whooo-hooo! Caesar wasn't alarmed in the least, trotted to it like it was 2 feet, but I think he was happy to show off his skills.

Yesterday, Mike and I volunteered at the Maryland Horse Trials at Loch Moy. It was a great event, and we were assigned some of the more difficult jumps on course so we got to see some very good (and very lucky) riding. Many of the BN jumps still scare me, but I am planning on heading out to school the course this weekend; hopefully, I'll be brave! I got to meet Cherie of Golightly Sporthorses, whose blog I avidly follow. How cool to meet a fellow blogger! She and her horse are quite the pair--fancy and talented, and they breezed through our training elements with ease. And Cherie didn't think I was a lunatic for approaching her blindly (hot dog and smoothie in tow); it will now be even more fun reading about their continued successes this season!

I'll be doing field work with my school staff this week; we'll be in Annapolis tomorrow and then Dorchester County at the end of the week. I'll post about my adventures when I return.

Unfortunately, it seems we've misplaced our camera :((( Big boo. So I don't know when I'll get to post photos of my most recent work. Maybe the gadget will turn up after all.