Playfullness

I opened my eyes for the first time today to Olivia's playfullness! We were doing figure of 8, and as I sent her off she just offered the trot, and her whole expression seemed to say 'whaayyyyy, lets have fun!!' I never really picked up on it before - but for the whole time I was with her today I was just laughing and smiling. I played with stopping at the barrel on the circle, and Olivia was watching me with such interest and enthusiasm in her eyes for when I would tell her to go again. It was so so so cool! I don't know how else to describe it!!

After a break, I'm finally working on our carrot stick riding again but this time I'm not going to miss 1000000 steps, so I'm working on our walk/trot/backup/stop transitions. A problem that I'm constantly running into, though, is that whenever I'm on her back Olivia never wants to just stand and chill. She always needs to wonder, and I'm really trying to be emotionally fit, and just keep asking her to stop but I catch myself loosing my temper and just pulling her head into lateral flexion. It's something I'm going to need to figure out, but I guess it takes time and patience. I'm also trying to work on my energy a lot - I never truly understood what Pat meant by saying, before you stop your horse, stop yourself. When I'm trying to stop Olivia, I sometimes still have a focus on a point. Today I was consciously trying to stop and stop EVERYTHING. I just stared at her neck and slumped down, and there was a difference. Fairly small, but still :)

Anyway, I'm glad to have finished on a good note because tomorrow I fly off to freezing Iceland with school for 5 days, so I hope she'll miss me !! Worst part is I'm missing her birthday :( So please do send birthday wishes to Olivia on April 1st, shes turning the big 5... !!

Smell ya later :P x