April Goals Recap and May Goals

Goals for April:

April was so much better for us than March!

Trailer Loading Practice: Pretty much every day that I've been able to (not raining and I'm at the barn with some daylight) I've been working on trailer loading and it's been paying off. She's been on and off quite a few times and while she's still anxious she's not freaking out quite as bad and is calming down quicker after.

Practice Riding the Lateral Work: Again, I'm doing a much better job at practicing this and we've been doing more lateral work in my lessons as well.

Structure Rides More Carefully: Meh, I have been feeling better about this and about how I'm structuring my weeks in general between lunging, riding, and trailer loading.

Trail Ride: Nope, I didn't get this accomplished but I'm happy enough with the trailer loading practice and once the ground dries out (crazy rain!!!!!!) I'll spend more time riding outside.

Goals for May:

I'm so looking forward to May :)

More Trailer Loading Practice: All of the trailer loading practice! I'm going to fully take advantage of the next month or so to do as much of this as possible.

More Consistency: With this I just want to continue to keep things like roundness or bend more consistently through the ride and not lose it for as long as I am now. I've already made lots of progress on this but I need to keep pushing and not just maintain what I've got right now.

Have a Successful Show: This is a two parter for me. Success will mean Katai being more relaxed, less frantic, and thus the ability for us to have more fun. I realize this is a tall order since it will only be her second show (and third time she's trailered off property for an event) but I'll be happy with even small progress.
The second is my goal. Horse shows don't make me competitive, lesson environments do, shows don't. Who knows maybe my mom was competitive enough for both of us at competitions ;) or maybe I just don't care. The more I've thought about our show last year the more I think that part of our extremely low score was that I didn't care enough. I got into the ring with a very relaxed attitude and only got tense/worried when Katai was threatening to blow up. I sort of think that if I'd gone in the ring with more of a plan or goal I'd have ridden rather than just letting her do her thing and would have gotten a better ride. So, my goal this year is to win our Intro C class. Yep, it's a tall order and could be impossible but there's my goal :)
Wether we win or not I'm not going to be upset or anything other than proud at both of us for doing it. However, I am going to push myself this year to do better than just be present and while a score of 40% would technically be an improvement I'm sure we can do better than that.