Been to Playschool

I'm Wednesay Mum turned Zippy and I out into the big field as usual, it turned out to be a lovely day, so we were somewhat surprised when she turned up at the field very early to collect us and bring us home. Very odd. 

It turned out I was being packed up into the box on wheels to go to Playschool. Yes honestly, Wickstead Equestrian Centre now have a Horseplay arena, it's amazing, it's also huge, as you can see from the picture below. 

I was very lucky, as one of Mums friends, impressed with my jumping at her yard (where Mum goes for lessons with Polly) invited me to come along for a showjumping and cross country schooling lesson. Whose going to say no to that. Below is me getting ready for Playschool. 

As Mum wasn't phased by my last attempts to be extra bouncy during the lesson I thought I needed to practice new tactics and having read up on my options plumped for THE REFUSUAL. I have to say this worked very well and really flustered Mum, as she's not used to me stopping. I had a wide selection of very brightly coloured jumps to stop at and managed a refuse pretty much all of them at least once, and several of them I managed multiple stops at, up to the point where the instructor decided I had better follow another horse, well I wasn't being left behind. Dam I've just worked out what she did, clever instructor, after that I forgot about refusing as I was too keen to keep up the the other horse - Clever!

What you can't really see from these photos is around the edge is an all weather cross country course with water, steps, ditches and some smaller cross country jumps. Well by this time I was flying, cantering through the water, jumping on and off the steps. I loved it so much I completely forgot about adopting my refusal strategy and jumped everything first time, giving Mum lots of confidence, we both loved it. 

So I have to say a big thank you to Penny for inviting us to come play, I loved Playschool and I hope I can go again soon.