Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, February 6th, 7th, and 8th, 2009

Friday was so good, but frustrating for me. I felt like everything I had accomplished and confirmed from the day before was lost. I get these scary feelings that I won’t be able to return to correct training sometimes. But, I feel it is important to be humbled often I guess. Roode was super though, and even Herr Schmidt said so. We worked on our same system again and Roode was great accept for me. I just wasn’t thinking enough. I kept making stupid mistakes without feeling and I was just frustrated with myself.

Saturday on the other hand was fantastic. There could not have been a better way to end the week. I had an early lesson with H.S. that was not even a personal lesson. We all had so much to do this weekend, so H.S. gave me a lesson while he rode Donnelly. He was doing 1 tempis on the diagonal while instructing me to pay attention to my own horse while I was warming up. I don’t mean he was telling me to pay attention to my own horse but he was instructing me to do something like making my horse even loose in the jaw to the inside. I think it was also so good because I had a bit of time to think to myself and my own training ability. Roode was so good. And I even started to try to do some two tempis in the end on my own because I suddenly had time as I had done the other movements and they were good. So, I did first three twos and the second track and thought hmmm…those were really good for just refreshing them after a long time. So then I went to the next track and watched in the mirror and did two 2’s, a 3, then two 2’s again. Hmm. I thought, “This is really fun”. Then I went to the next track and I could see that Herr Schmidt was taking a break and watching and BuMmEr…I butchered the line. There was no count to be seen. The first was a two, then a three (woops), then another two, then a four. Herr Schmidt asked me what it was that I wanted. I said “Twos”. He told me that was fine but to do them again and be certain that I gave the right aid at the right time. So I went on the next diagonal and we did 5 really great twos. And Herr Schmidt missed it as he was passaging across the short side that I was about to turn on too!

Then I was fertig (finished). I was so happy with this entire week!