Things Change: Goals and Stuff

My plans evolve as life happens and it's time to talk about that a little bit. I already wrote a show schedule for this year and I actually do try to keep the sidebar more or less current, so you might have noticed this already. On the other hand, possibly you have other things to do than read widgets on my blog.

First off, here are some mini goals I want to work towards for showing this year.

1) Canter in the warm up.

Maybe not at the first show. Maybe not at the second show. Cantering has been a difficult and hot button topic for us in the past. Courage seems to be getting much stronger and more relaxed about it and first level has a lot of cantering, so I want to be to a point where it's blase enough that we can do it whenever without worrying. Show warm ups are not a place to school hard things, so I want canter to not be a hard thing by the end of the year.

bonus points if we do it on the right lead

2) Pile on the show miles.

Showing is a SKILL and until I master it, showing is always going to be hard for us. I want to be 100% (or at least like 91.5%) confident that I can ride my horse at shows. I can ride at home just fine. It's throwing in all those showing variables that makes it a question mark and we're at the point where we just need miles to fix it. By the end of last year, Courage was acting like an old pro. I want to confirm that attitude and keep on going.

Those are goals that I think are achievable for us. I feel comfortable adding them because I've taken some things away, too.

For starters, I am not showing Courage over fences this year. Just thinking about it makes me anxious and anxiety does not make me ride better. I was thinking about doing the derbies again to try and qualify for a year end award (at crossrails!!) but we're just not going to. Nope. Not a fun idea.

HOWEVER that doesn't mean we're giving up all hope of tri-colored satin.

horse needs more satin

We found a new local show series with reportedly cool series-end awards, so we're doing dressage there. First show is in two weeks, which is a great progress check to help us prep for the season. We're going to do training level because it's small arena, early in the year, and if miles are the goal, we can certainly get them at training. Yay!

We're also gunning for the local schooling/opportunity series at first level. But hey. If we're not ready, we can just keep showing at training and getting experience so that it's all go time when we are ready. The sum total of miles is experience and the more we have of that, the better.