Long Time No Blog!

Apologies for not blogging in a little while, been managing to keep myself relatively busy even with only 3 horses to ride.  Updates on the ponies, Tango is doing well and has had so many trial rides, the poor guy has had about 6 different riders on him in the past week, he's such a good boy though, such a trooper and never does anything wrong, everyone who has ridden him seems to really like him and have gotten a couple follow ups so now just to find the perfect person to become his new owner, will miss him for sure he's such a sweetheart but also know he will make a great schoolmaster for someone out there.  Roz is continuing to progress nicely in her training, though I am sporting a rather large bruise on my knee due to an unfortunate collision with the wall which occurred while riding her, haha nothing serious but an inside leg aid gone wrong which resulted in a rather interesting body check into the rail, other than that she's doing well, still working to get her more engaged from behind and up in front and to sit more in the canter, lots of travers voltes to get her flexing more through her hocks and carrying behind, she does lovely half passes and is starting to figure out her extended gaits more and more though she can't hold the balance and carriage yet of course but when she is able to I think it's going to be pretty nice.  Nico is continuing to do really well, he feels great and we've been working a lot to get a more balanced collected canter in between the movements.  Canada's Technical Leader Markus Gribbe was at our barn yesterday and today which was great, always good to get a different eye now and again and he also really helped with the piaffe and passage from the ground today which was great, Nico's piaffe is really starting to have some fantastic moments and is feeling easier and easier though I have to be very careful in my riding, he becomes very sensitive in his balance in the piaffe so I'm finding more and more that I have to be super precise in my balance and aids and when that all comes together he feels amazing.  I'm probably going to haul him down to the show grounds this weekend just to school, think it's time to get him out to a busy venue and just see if we can keep the same quality work in a more pressured situation, my plan is to just ease him in to things and see how he reacts and then go from there, but generally speaking I think he is transforming more and more into a very nice Grand Prix horse.  Other random notes on the ponies, in stall cleanliness they definitely rank Roz, Nico and Tango consistently, Roz is very neat and tidy, love cleaning her stall, Nico is fairly average and Tango is most definitely the pig pen of the group!  My parents are both in town visiting, Dad took a couple weeks off to come down and visit so him and Mom are staying at a little hotel across town having a nice vacation and they've been very supportive coming out to see me ride, has also reminded me how much is misunderstood about the sport of dressage (my parents not being horse people) and explaining to people why we have to make the decisions we do in this sport based upon what is best for the animal we are riding and not necessarily what our competitive brains want to do but what is going to be best for our horses in the long run.  Have been out to a couple shows and entries are definitely down this year so far, first two national shows were quite small and even the CDI 1* last week was on the smaller side, though Canada was very well represented which is great for our country!  The CDI 3* is looking a little bigger this week and I expect that the shows in February and March will be bigger as well, the Masters is on at the Jim Brandon center this week and I'm so looking forward to seeing Valegro and Charlotte Dujardin, I love this combination, fantastic horse and rider pair and they make everything look effortless, have to love that, so inspiring to watch!