Its October Already!!

As the saying goes: "Time flies when your having fun!" And that I must say I most certainly am. Working at the barn is going great and all three musketeers are doing fabulous. Each of my boys are progressing at an incredible rate within their respected training level. In my last post I wrote that my learning curve was sky rocketing. That was a couple of weeks ago and I still feel the same way, every day Leonie gives me another insight to the intricate realm of a (in her words) "three dimensional contact". Leonie uses a lot of visual expressions to get her point across and its fantastic for my understanding because I am a very visual learner and it really helps me to hold a picture in my mind of where I want to horse to be.

Today Blitz and I were part of the demonstration team for a presentation Leonie did. One if Leonie’s students had a large open house at her stable and Leonie was ask to be a guest speaker and explain the fundamentals of Dressage. Martin (Leonie’s Bereiter) rode a young four year old mare first; demonstrating how a young dressage horse should be ridden. Next Blitz and I demonstrated the next level of collection and although we rode higher level movements like trot/canter half passes, tempi changes and pirouettes Leonie really emphasized the importance of the basics again. I was so proud of Blitz because although there was a lot of atmosphere because of the huge crowd with screaming kids and bright decorations Blitz stayed right with me the whole time- locked in one my seat- and proudly showed off his moves! At the end Leonie rode on of her Grand Prix horses, “Prinz” wrapping up the demonstration by presenting the final product- in a very impressive manner-  the whole training scale.

This is Blitz and I warming up outside in there beautiful out door ring. I should also ponit out that there were kids playing in a large blow up bouncing tent right next to the ring, I think Blitz's eyes almost popped out of his head but... the brave man still stayed right with me!

Here I'm doing tempi changes as Leonie is explaining the fundementals

Working on our canter pirouettes

Although 85% of my time is spent working and riding, I still have had plenty of opportunity to meet up with all of my various family members who also live in Germany and I’ve also had the chance to go out with some old friends. Work hard, play hard right :-)

I hope everyone who is reading this is doing fabulous I miss you all and I’ll do my best not to leave such large gaps between posts.