My super smart, and very clever blonde (Summer) was a bit off colour earlier this week. Totally lethargic, riding along with reins at the buckle and not a shy in sight.
Decided she was not herself so cut the ride short and headed home.
Pretty sure she was reacting to the Strangles/Tetanus vaccine she had been given 3 days earlier.

Anyhoo, today we went riding and its all situation normal again! Nearly came off twice and had 3 other oops's, lol. Nice to have her back again.

But it got me thinking about progress. How do individuals rate their own progress with their horses?

For me its usually " I only nearly fell off twice today" and thats reasonably good for us, depending on what type of a ride we are on. Other times its whether we managed to maintain a rhythm on a canter circle which is harder than it seems out here as we don't have ANY flat land.

I guess it comes down to what type of riding your doing or what your training for but I would be interested to hear how others rate progress. Whether you won something out in a competition? or just a smaller goal like mine which is to stay on! LOL

hmmmm gees

Okay I work off whatever Im focussing on at the time... If IM doing a lot of showhunter - I usually have set goals like - landing on the right leg everytime, hitting the right number of strides etc... We also seem to have the same judges alot - so its good to see how they score you based on how you think they went....

Dressage /flat wise its more about how I felt afterward - my big goal with dressage is getting her to stay soft and not get excited (But stay in front of my leg) and to keep her flexing and not go like a plank on the right rein so am happy when we succeed in that