Coming back

So... after Chatt Hills, Fleck had a day or two off and we did some light riding. I took him and Danny for a trail ride. Nothing too exciting. Then we injected his knees. He was only supposed to have three days off, but got a whole week off, thanks to work and life. Which put us to Thursday of last week.  We're still working on getting a new dressage saddle and at this point we are dressage saddleless. But since we had a big jumping weekend ahead, I opted to try to flat. So on Thursday we did some dressage and worked on our dressage test for the Area champs. And man oh man, do I HATE that dressage test. I am so tempted to move back up to prelim just so we don't have to do that stupid test...  It's the absolute worst test possible for Fleck and I. It plays on all of our weaknesses. So, it's down centerline, then a 15 meter figure 8 at the trot. Which isn't too bad except I suck at geometry, so I'm either doing a 10 meter or a 12 meter egg thing. Then it's canter a 15 meter circle then a canter lengthen 20 meter circle. Ugh..  I hate lengthenings on the circle. Then the free walk, which is also not our forte. And this is where it REALLY goes downhill... then the right lead canter... our worst.. to the canter lengthen... on a circle... then back to working canter, then down to trot in the corner, then you have just the corner to get them back in a decent trot before you do your stretchy trot at A. Okay, I've broken Fleck's stretchy trot.... So then you have a corner to collect them back up and then it's trot lengthen across the diagonal. All of this comes up really really fast. So argh... Flecks confused, I can't get my act together to tell him what I want.. It's just a mess. But oh well. We'll muddle through it at Area Champs and we BETTER get our clean run so we can try prelim again and get away from that darn awful test! So then after that I was a little annoyed and knew Fleck was too. So I decided, hey... since I'm in my jump saddle... let's jump. Well, the only jump up was one rail of my swedish oxer... which was the biggest jump I had set up. But no worries... Fleck was great. Good to know his knees were happy :) So then I thought... hmmm... we're going to the Lucinda clinic this weekend... she likes skinnies. So... I made Fleck jump my little step stool mounting block. Hee hee. He was so confused. It took three or four tries, but he did it. Whoo hoo. We're ready!

So then Friday came. FLECKS BIRTHDAY!!!!!! Awww... my best guy turned 15!!  My husband asked how much longer he would be rideable! NO!!! He's not old.. he's PRIME :) We celebrated with carrots and then..... I put him in the trailer and took him to Robin's farm for a lesson with his favorite Aunt Beth! :) We did flat work because of the jumping weekend ahead. It sucks trying to do dressage in my jump saddle. But we did it and got some nice work out of him. We worked on the rapid fire transitions in the test and on the stretchy trot. Got some decent work. So then Fleck got a bath in the nice warm water at Robins. Yay! And then we headed off to start our next adventure....  :) :)