So, I haven’t been riding, due to one night over the weekend when Loren and I stayed up all night. It generally takes me a week or so to recover, provided I get normal sleep the whole time.
So getting up early to ride has been out, actually just getting up on time has been hard!
But I have been doing some thinking about Lucy’s training, eventing and endurance wise. And I have been reading some dressage articles (a few years ago when I was still getting dressage today, I went through all my old magazines and cut out all the interesting articles and put them into one big binder, its really handy!).
Conclusion number 1:
Lucy may not have been getting enough calories for the kind of work I was asking of her last Summer. Lucy only gets large amounts of grain in the winter to keep her weight up. I only feed more grain if I think her weight isn’t right. Maybe she won’t expend the energy out on the trail if she feels she doesn’t have the reserves to handle it. Maybe I am giving my horse too much credit! But I think I might continue giving her grain this Spring/Summer and see how she does.
Conclusion number 2:
If I am riding Lucy at home during the week, working on dressage training, then perhaps if I take her on a long trail ride once a week and do lots of trot/canter work, she might not hate trail work so much.
Conclusion number 3:
We are going to Shine and Shine Only in April! That will give us enough time to get her in shape (she should be fine for a 25 miler without a huge amount of conditioning) and should give Georgie enough time to settle in first. Then I can see if Lucy enjoys the competition enough to work through her not liking the conditioning aspect. I was pretty sure I would take her to one. If not Shine and Shine Only, then Fireworks.
Now I really need to ride! Yesterday was my birthday, and it was upsetting to not get to ride! So I am deffiantly going for a good ride this weekend and then get back to riding during the week next week.
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