Yay! Progress!

Its been an interesting week.

A friend found a fabulous fjord for sale. He'd be great for me. I was talking to the Taskmaster about it and she said, basically, "I'd hate for you to buy a $10,000 horse and then ruin him with your horrible arms, like you seem to have ruined Banana."

If you're shocked you'd be joining everyone else I've told this to. Not because my arms are the most awesome arms in the world, oh goodness they are not. There's a whole lot wrong with them, most of it due to the nerve crap going on in my neck. What is shocking, for me, about this is that I have been working with her for two years now. If my arms are so horrendous why hasn't she fixed them? I'm less bothered by the comment than that she hasn't helped me fix them. I asked her, "What about Meatball? I haven't ruined him?" Well, I guess he doesn't count for some reason.

I've been extricating myself from the situation for months, trying to make her less reliant on my help. Banana and I didn't progress much over the winter, part of the reason I've been so confused about the mare. Turns out, we just needed a different perspective.

Wednesday Banana went back to the fabulous DN. Banana has been with her before, to work on her trailering problem. DN basically had Banana and I fixed in three rides. DN is not a dressage queen who is only two rides away from her USDF Gold Medal. She's a good, basic trainer. What was her trick? Well, first she said we were going to cheat a bit :D Banana lightens up when you leg yield, so we leg yielded for every transition for two days.

Which brings us to today and Banana's first dressage show. She is fabulous in new places, fabulous in that she doesn't act any differently than when she's in an old place. We had a good warmup with leg yields and shoulder in, so she was listening to my leg (something we struggle with.) We rode BN A and B. 5's, 6's and 7's, 42 on BN A, 41 on BN B (those are penalty points, not percents.) For comparison, Penny's best score was 42 on BN B. Was it my best test? Of course not. But for Banana's first dressage show, and her first show that she had to travel to? Pretty awesome.

I have definitely, 100% decided I'm keeping her. We still need some help, but I just needed some progress to happen so I'd feel better. And we finally made some.