ponies, ponies, ponies

So I got asked a question the other day which I was surprised that I couldn't answer..."Where do you want to go with Rori?".  For some reason, I couldn't think of what to say!  I love eventing, and know that is where I want to be competing, but as for what level? I just don't know. 

Since I don't plan on selling Rori, I feel like the decision on how far we go is her choice.  We've been through so much, good and bad, and at this point I know her and feel we make a good team.  She has the talent to go wherever I want to go, but I really just want to go wherever we're both comfortable at.  I'm not going to push her past her abilities but I also don't want to limit mine.  At this point I'm excited about going Training at the end of February and my short term goal is just to do well and succeed at that level.  I guess anything beyond that will have to be addressed when it comes up!

Anyway...back to some Florida adventures!  These past couple of days I've had the opportunity to watch David O'Conner do some training sessions with the Canadian team.  After watching everyone ride down here I see how important it is to get the basics in if I want to succeed at the higher levels.  It gets so technical and if the basics are not there, things will fall apart.  I've watched some really spectacular riders and feel so privileged to be down here learning so much.  I have a lot of information that I need to "put on hold" for the future, but either way just watching these riders has taught me so much that I can bring into my own horse's training.  

Speaking of my own horse's training...she's been going fantastic!  Over the past week I've been working on using my body to get her to slow down, keeping my position, and keeping the half halt out in front of my instead of pulling backwards and loosing the energy.  To say the least, she felt amazing today!  I just did some light flat since she showed this whole weekend  but we were really able to pull it together and the result felt great (even Sinead noticed!)  Having Sinead keeping her eye on us everyday is really paying off and well worth the money I spent to come down here.  

On another note of my lovely mare, we've been trying to put weight on her for the past couple of months and nothing seems to have been working.  So today I had the vet come out and it seems she needs her teeth done desperately.  I always felt like I kept up with that pretty well but I guess our last dentist was not doing a good job since I have been using him for the past 2 years and the vet said it looked like she hadn't been done in that long.  So tomorrow the dentist comes to float her teeth and hopefully we'll see some positive results soon!

More later! Hope everyone else is staying warm...because we sure are!