Day 16-22

 "Your horse doesn't have weaknesses, he has opportunities" -Steffen Peters



What a week!
So so very sorry for not posting for almost a week!


Day 16 Saturday January 19th 2013
From 9:30 in till 1 I scribed for a judge that was practice judging the CDI at Jim Brandon, she was an R judge taking the course to become an S judge. It was a lot of fun to scribe for her but I must say that I pity scribes who actually for real scribe the Grand Prix classes!!
In the afternoon I went with my room mate to the Global Dressage showgrounds to watch one of her friends that was jumping in a invitational collegiate show. She won her class on the 4 year old she drew! :-)
After returning to the farm I rode Tee on my own and he was good but after making so much progress the past couple rides I expected a bit much from him so he got frustrated but after I backed off he was really good!!

Day 17 Sunday January 20th 2013
The beginning of the craziness!! 
Around 7:30 a few of the other kids in the program and myself headed to White Fences to work at the FEI Trainers Conference (the program didn't officially start in till Monday the 21st but they had an extra day to narrow down the participants). After doing a bit of work we were able to watch the amazing Steffen Peters teach/ride as well as Scott Hassler. I think I took about 3 pages of notes in just a few hours of auditing! Steffen is truly amazing to watch, everything he does looks effortless and his compassion and generosity towards the horses he worked with was phenomenal. 
I worked Tee on my own again in the afternoon, he was full of energy and really tense. After he settled down a bit he was great! We worked on consistently stretching and little lengthenings.
We had a lecture in the evening with Jane Karole who is a phsicologist. She talked about turning negative into positives and helped us discover our "key words" so that when we are tense we can go to our "happy place"

Day 18 Monday January 21st 2013
Monday was the first day of the FEI trainers conference. We were all there from 8-4, needless to say our brains were JAM packed with a lot of information by the end of the conference! 
Rode Tee in the evening and kept building on things previously mentioned: stretching, going forward, effective use of the outside rein and for myself; my position!!!
Our lecture in the evening was apart of the trainers conference. The first part was given by John Hall on digestive system/function. The second part was a question/answer open discussion with Steffen and Scott.

Day 19 Tuesday January 22nd 2013
Tuesday ended up much like Monday: audited trainers conference then after tearing down we headed back to HGF to ride. I unfortunately was in a rush so I didn't take care of my shoulder and freeze it like normal. I was in a lot of pain halfway through my ride so I got off because I knew I wasn't going to be productive and that wasn't fair to Tee, one of the other girls hoped on him for me and rode him for a few.
No lecture!

Day 20 Wednesday January 23rd 2013
Wednesday was an FEI education day at HGF. Some of the WITee's were "guinea pigs" for the instructors. It was interesting to see some of the different teaching styles!
After the workshop was over I rode Tee, he was very inattentive at first because it was turnout time at the main barn. After we got focused and organized everything went reaallyyyy well. We worked on keeping him round but then lowering his neck thus making him a slight bit deeper, once he was there in the trot I asked for a canter transition and VIOLA! A ROUND CANTER TRANSITION! :-D Did the same thing the other way and it wasn't just luck! Pretty sure I was the happiest person alive at that point!

Day 21 Thursday January 24th 2013
Got to ride with Annie Morris!
We worked on fixing my position a bit more. Really focused on not collapsing in my torso, really using my core muscles which helped me from going behind the vertical, making my hip angle more upright and fixing my fidgety hands so that Tee and myself don't get into a game of tit for tat. Also did a little leg yield on the open side of the circle to help him step under and come through his back more which in turn helped his relaxation and stride. 
In the evening we had a WONDERFUL dinner at the Davis' beautiful house in Loxahatchee. A few of us even enjoyed a game of volley ball in Megan's outdoor arena :-)

Day 22 Friday January 25th 2013
 Today was a hack day so nothing much went on except for the written test we all had to take!
34 questions on the training scale :-) I studied for an 1 1/2 before the test so I'm hoping I did pretty well!
After the test we had a little fitness test also: see how long we could plank and how many sit ups we could do. I ended up with a 1:55 plank and 52 sit ups.
Took Tee for a short hack with some of the other girls then we galloped a few laps in the field out front of HGF.


I think that is it for tonight! again I apologize for not updating sooner, as you can see its been a pretty crazy week!