Busy Week!:)

Lots and lots to update!  Earlier this week Miss Roz got her very first in-hand session with Juan Matute, it's always interesting to see the greenies and how they take to it at first, Roz is a funny girl because she always takes a little while to catch on to something but then when she starts to get it she's eager to try it out, the in-hand work was no different, it took a good while at the beginning to get her reacting but then out of the blue she started to get it, when I got back on her I felt a huge difference, she was stretching more to the contact and her shoulders were much more square in front of me, since then she's starting to play around more and more with her hindlegs, right now it's usually just a clumsy jump behind or hiccup of the croup but that's okay, at this point in time all we are looking for is that she reacts in the right area, after that is more confirmed then we can start to narrow it down and explain to her how it is we want her to react, one step at a time.  Yesterday and today Nico and I attended our first show of the season, just a smallish schooling show and we rode two Grand Prix tests, generally speaking I was quite pleased with him, nothing amazing score wise or anything, it's all still a bit too green naturally and he had lots of little green mistakes but they were honest mistakes not due to him getting distracted or being silly so this I can totally accept.  Yesterday he was particularly focused and I was quite pleased with how our canter work went....except for the centerline pirouettes those are still quite tricky but we're working on it, but usually the canter tour is weaker than the trot tour and this weekend it was the other way around so that's a good step I think!  Our piaffe didn't want to work in the ring yesterday but that's just a bit of time to get him on the same page as me in the ring, we know he doesn't lack in talent when it comes to piaffe so that's just a matter of getting him dialed it to doing it on the mark.  Today we had a pretty big challenge, just as I was halfway to the warmup ring it started pouring, pelting rain and flying leaves, needless to say Nico wanted out of there and spun and took off back to the barn, I can't honestly say I blamed him I didn't want to be out in that either!!  I got back to the barn under cover and thought about scratching him but then the skies cleared to a reasonable amount of rain, unfortunately we now only had about 25 mins to warmup, half our usual warmup time but I figured oh well, got him out to the warmup and he was very tense, got through our warmup and then the rider in front of us missed her ride time so being that none of us could see a rider in that ring and yet we knew she had warmed up we couldn't figure out if there was a delay, then next thing I know the steward is calling me because the previous rider missed her time and now the judge had blown the whistle for my time!  So we trotted straight over and cantered right up the centerline, no going around the ring, relaxing him or anything, hardly ideal for a horse who tends to be spooky, but we managed to keep a lid on things and work it out not too badly, again too many mistakes to be anything spectacular score wise but fair mistakes, I was proud of him for coping under those circumstances, there was a time where that would not have happened at all so progress is being made:)  Basically because we have moved up to a new level it's going to take some time to find the ins and outs of the test, it's a huge leap from the small tour to the Grand Prix so I'm still figuring out where the trouble spots are for Nico and how to best navigate the test for him when we put it all together and he needs to gain a bit more confidence in some of the movements in the ring, it's a joint production to pull this all off, haha who knew dressage was so hard?!;)  Now I am going to sit down and make some notes while the tests of the past two days are fresh in my mind so that I can remember the trouble spots and how I want to ride them on the next go around:)