April started off cold and wet. Not very helpful for riding outside or doing much hill/fitness work. In fact, I was even on the fence about clipping again before our first show at Loch Moy, just because it had been so cold.
I was able to jump outside for the first time about a week before we left for LM. Otter hadn't forgotten a thing since the fall - he was bold and attacking the fences.
LM weekend arrived and I was so glad that I did reclip Otter -it was HOT (~80 degrees, but when you've been used to 40 and 50s...). Schooling the day before went well. We got to play around in their schooling water complex some and schooled the bank in to the bank out which he did awesome on.
I also learned that night, that I can never bed Otter down on straw, because he will eat it. Like all of it if allowed. So after a bit of a delay because Otter had a bit of a bellyache (that went away with some walking and time away from the straw) we switched him over to shavings and went out to dinner.
The morning of the mini trials rolled around and my ride times weren't until the afternoon so I just hung out and watched my trainer's rides and just enjoyed the warmer weather and being back at a show again.
Finally it was our ride times so I got ready and headed down to warm up for dressage. Suddenly I had a fire-breathing dragon on my hands! After a warm up that involved lots of sudden explosions when I put my leg on, and lots of cantering around trying to take the edge off, we headed into the ring. We managed to mostly keep our act together for the test, lots of comments of resistance and tension. We ended up with a 42.5
Stadium went fairly well, although we did pull down a rail.\
XC went decently - because of the weather, we hadn't been able to do too much conditioning work leading up to the show, and because of his antics in dressage, he was starting to get a little tired. There was also a huge hill at the beginning of the course. I am super proud of him though - even when he was unsure of the fences, I put my leg on and he went.
This was the only fence that he really thought about stopping at. Super small brush fence. But he went, so he got lots of praise after it.
In the end, I knew I needed to work on dressage some more, but I was really proud of the way that he handled stadium and an XC course that he had never seen before.
At the end of the month, I took him to a small local dressage show, just to get him (and me) some more experience in the dressage ring. He did really well - got in the high 60's for all 4 tests that we did.
During the month, I started thinking more about how I was riding him in my dressage saddle. While it fits him well, it doesn't fit me quite as much (twist is wider that I prefer), so it is hard for me to be in an effective position in it. I did some saddle shopping, but we had the problem of they either fit me or him, but not both of us. I decided to keep my saddle since it fits him, and work on my position more.
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