Needless to say, I have been kind of bad about updating my "personal" blog. I get so caught up with school, riding, and writing for Horse Nation that it's hard for me to get on over here and write a new post! If you are ever wondering what's going on in my life, I write a weekly column that airs every Thursday over at HN. If you want to catch up with old ones, go to HN and search "McKenna" and it should all pop up.
I'll try and keep this short and sweet, because, well, I love talking about Brickland Eventing!
Last weekend I had the oppurtunity to go down for a few days and it was AWESOME. Basically, I'm in love with my job. I learned the gist of things and got to ride lots of ponies (thank you Jaclyn Burke!). I had a few lessons from Jaclyn who was a lovely teacher and then I had my first ever lesson with Emily on Sunday. AMAZING!! Emily reallly had me focusing on loosening my upper body, making it work as all seperate pieces and not just one part, especially with my hips. I did a lot of "standing" but lowering myself and switching it up between standing and posting, ect. By the end of the lesson I felt a HUGE difference.
Dorito and I are doing well at home. Our jumping is coming along and I'm still having some awesome jump rides on him. I'm incorporating bigger fences into our regular jump rides to get us both a bit more used to them and I'm really trying to focus on letting him do his job. Within the next week I should be setting up a few grids to jump through and really focus on myself and add to let him figure it out. Our flat work is really coming along nicely. He is responding SO much better to my aides and he's being quite consistent. I'm beginning to work more on our extensions and trying to make him bring his head up and make his neck longer. Fitness is also starting to become a huge thing for him, within the next two weeks I'm hoping to bump him up to 35-40 minutes of trotting and in 3-4 weeks to 50 minutes. He needs more trot than canter so I will probably get him on a schedule where he does his full trot once a week, with a bit of cantering and his full canter (6-9 minutes) and trot work every 2 weeks. With him being a pony, I need every advantage I can get and one is fitness. Luckily for me he gets fit pretty easily it's just a matter of getting him there.
The plan for me is to head to Seneca Valley at training level and then assuming all goes well I will do training level at Surefire the weekend after. After that my schedule is still a bit undecided but I will probably riding at both Maryland HT and Millbrook (NEW YORK BABY!!) and of course some other events weaved in there. I will also be out and about every weekend with the Brickland Team helping Emily and others out.
I have 16 more days in Maryland and A LOT to do by then!!
The climb is almost over....
Kick On!
-McKenna
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