Goal Setting and Delays

I have decided that in order to help me stay motivated I'm going to start to set weekly goals for now until we've made a bit more progress. For this week the goals go like this;

1. Ground drive at least three times and include wearing the bridle while doing it but without the reins attached.

2. Wear the bridle when possible but I don't want to push this too much until I find a bit that I feel more comfortable with since this one seems huge for her tiny mouth.

3. Work more on desensitizing to the dressage whip

4. Feet, feet, feet. I need to do more trimming and continue to get her heels down.


I'm planning on adding the saddle and doing some riding next week as long as ground driving goes well this week but that all depends on the weather and there lies the crux of the current issue.

It has been far warmer recently which means that it has been in the low 30s consistently :P  It has also been drizzling and or sleeting and with the constant cloud cover all I want to do is curl up in bed. Add to that the fact that with the recent rain there is a thick coating of ice on everything which of course makes footing far too slippery to be safe for much of anything. About half of the arena right now is still snowy enough that its not too slippery but one whole end is like a skating rink so I'm not risking trying to ride and possibly dealing with a lack of steering since we could both end up at that end.

If I can just wait until the ice goes away and get some riding in and get the trailer out of the snow bank so that we can work on loading we could actually get somewhere. I have no doubt that we could get some good riding done now since mostly she just needs time under saddle but first I need the weather to cooperate.