I did a Kim Kardashian... I posed for a nude photo shoot... Sort of. I participated in the 'I'd rather be naked' Riders 4 Helmets campaign for International Helmet Awareness Day!! It was a bit of fun and quite a bit cold but it was all for a great cause!! Pop onto the R4H website to have a look at the full video of all the riders who participated!
My phrase of the month is 'Take a risk' I have decided. Go for it. Push the boundaries. See what happens when you do. A little adrenalin never hurt anyone!
I seem to be repeating these lines in every lesson I teach and telling myself this every time I ride my own horses as well. In winter we (well I do anyway...) seem to get a bit stuck and sour. There aren't any events on and the ground is often too wet to ride on! The days are short and the weather is so, so cold!! The horses don't ever seem to go well and motivation dwindles... So how do we break out of this monotony of wearing moats in our arenas? Push the limits!
Beautiful but SOOOO cold!
Your medium trot feels pretty good does it? But can you go bigger? Are you feeling a bit chicken about taking your young horse out and about? Go for it! See what happens? Worst case scenario your horse gets a good floating lesson and an opportunity to stand and watch some other horses run around!
It's really common over winter to get arena stale and it's not just the horses! We eventers are a crazy bunch. Why should we tone it down and ride like dressage princesses just because it's cold? Toughen up! Put in the hard yards now before the season starts (Mainland or Tasmanian!) so that you are ready to go once it rolls around and not playing catch up. With that in mind I am riding a lot of horses at the moment. I am lucky enough to have four entrusted to me for a while to get them going, as well as Sizzle (who still thinks he is still on the Melbourne XC course... Sizzle SLOW DOWN and STOP TRYING TO GALLOP!!) and Poppy (who is being an angel... guess who is the favourite currently...) and not to mention a certain special Smash pony who is hopefully arriving on Wednesday. Exciting times..
Not to mention that it ACTUALLY SNOWED AT OUR PLACE! It was actually the first time in our 92 year old neighbour’s memory that it has EVER settled at Birralee. It was amazing!! But the ponies were NOT impressed. I'm pretty sure Pop and Siz wanted to hide in their stables for the day.
The exciting news that I was talking about in the last blog is still exciting but just not announced yet so stay tuned
So get out into that cold weather people and take some risks! And if it all goes wrong just say Alice told you to...
Until next time 
Alice
Ram
