So the good news is, trial is now officially over, and I can get back to riding, and blogging about it.  The better news is that we won the trial, so all that hard work wasn’t for nothing.  The judge didn’t hand me a blue ribbon at the end, which I found a little odd… but perhaps it’s in the mail. Tucker and I have been back to regular work for about three weeks and he’s doing really, really well.  We’ve been taking dressage lessons from the trainer at our farm (Cindy, you may remember she once let me ride one of her dressage mares — results were comical) and I am  loving  them.  Not that I’m going to leave hunterland anytime soon, but I am definitely going to keep up with the lessons as a way to get Tucker more supple, straight, and forward. I think part of what I like so much is hearing things from a new perspective.  The concepts aren’t new, just presented differently.  Example:  I’ve always worked on keeping Tucker from popping his outside shoulder.  Now I’m working on not letting him collapse his inside shoulder.  See?  Same concept, just approaching it differently.  I like thinking of it this way better, it feels less like a game of whack-a-mole that I’m never going to win.  Everything is falling under the general umbrella of “forward and straight,” which is a goal we can work with.