Thursday, January 14, 2010

Ireland watch continues

I turned in my passport application today. I'm going to Ireland March 16-23! My good friend Lynda is going with me. We're going to stay half the time in Bantry and half in Galway. I'm starting to eye the equestrian options in Bantry. A half-day ride through the countryside would be amazing. Now I need to figure out the awesome new Canon digital SLR my parents got me for Christmas. I used to be quite the photographer; now's the time to get back into practice.

Willow the Woolly grew out the first trace clip I gave her in November, so I clipped her again Tuesday evening. She just about had a heat stroke when I worked her on Monday; I felt bad. Last night I did some work in hand with her. We hadn't done that in a long while. She was quite good about it. I even got two piaffe steps out of her going to the left. Mostly, though, I was just reacquainting her with the idea. The first two things you have to establish when doing work in hand are submission and trust. Otherwise, explosions ensue.

Willow's starting to offer almost a pirouette canter when I bring her in on a tight circle on the lunge. It's fun to see. I think we're on the cusp of making some great progress this year.

4 comments:

EcoLicious Equestrian said...

i'd love to see the "ground" piroutes...get a video :o)

Kathleen @ ForgingAhead said...

Sounds like a wonderful trip! We're hoping to go to Ireland this year sometime...let me know what horsey outlets you find.

Stephanie - Siouxzeegirl Designs said...

Oh you will have such a lovely time in Ireland! My DH and I went late last summer for 2 weeks and I went out riding a couple of times. It was pure heaven!!!
And we took over 2000 pictures between the 2 of us! It was so great.

Anonymous said...

Here are a couple of websites that might be useful: http://www.horse-riding-ireland.com/, http://www.irishhorsesociety.com/ridingstables/stablescork.htm. Also, if you can fit in a side trip http://www.irish-national-stud.ie/ might be worth a visit