I am a leaf on the wind... Watch how I soar

Not me, obviously. Ali has been doing a fair bit of soaring this week. Jumping practise with Nahiade yesterday, ready for another comp on Sunday, she's entered in the 80cm class....

Nahiade has a habit of drifting to one side to get back to her mates quicker so Ali had to address that, and at the same time stopping her from rushing the fence. She's a complicated beastie due to past treatment and it's taken Ali weeks of patience to get to know how to handle her, but she's getting there..... :-)

After the riding lesson, she went to ride Chester as he's not done much recently. He really isn't a complicated beastie, he doesn't see the point of exerting himself when he could be eating some nice grass but when revved up to it he can jump nicely, anything up to 80cms is nae bother.....

But when Ali put it up to the next notch (which is 104cms, strange grading on those plastic jumps) he decided actually that would require some serious effort and thinking about it, he'd really rather not....

But with a bit of encouragement, he actually did it, and left the pole up!

That's the most work he's done for ages.........he's not exactly showjumper material (we got him on a weighbridge recently, at 13.3 hh he weighs 530 kilos, even Gandalf only weighs in at 554!) but I think it does him good to do something different once in a while.

Love him :-)