Peace reins.

There is no doubt that keeping the four in two pairs has made all four of them different in quite a subtle way. Nothing obvious, but there is a feel of peace and calm that did not quite exist while all four were in the barn. Radar and Buttie now have ad lib haylage on the yard and muzzles overnight and Jazz and Radar have restricted haylage during the day and free rein with the grass at night. Ace also gets a breakfast of 2 kg of pony cubes that the others don't have, plus sugar beet, copper and brewers yeast that they do. He also has Settelex to keep his stomach free of acid. All four look really well.

I actually RODE today. It feels like I should have a trumpet fanfare, I am struggling just to get life back to normal, though there is no reason why I shouldn't. The weather doesn't help, it's been raining a lot and is very windy most of the time. Not weather that screams "RIDE NOW" at you, is it?

But I bullied myself into taking Ace into the barn and we had a good session. He's very slow to learn shoulder in in walk. I put it down to having done everything until he came to me in a "forward, forward" school of training, and never actually having done any work that was slow and measured that he had to really think about. He's been equally bad at walk to halt, though the halt itself, when it happens, is natually square. Anyway, we got there, though I did do it by keeping him a little overbent, otherwise he shrank back under me and set his back. Once he understands that he needs to keep his back free in order to cross his front legs, then he'll be able to do it with his head in the right place.

We also did some work on the walk/trot transition, where it is his preference to raise his head and use it to pull his shoulders up off the floor. I worked on asking him to go forwards into the trot instead of kicking upwards into it by ensuring that he was stretching forwards before I asked for the transition and holding him "out there" with my seat as he took the first step. It went well and I was please. It took six attempts to get a halt without him pulling back into himself as he went to stop, but as soon as we got one I jumped off - and it was square :-)

I am going to use spurs soon because he is not sharp enough off my legs and I do not want to pony-club kick him. I think spurs will be a much better and more subtle idea .

SH was grouchy today. Not enough sleep. We are hoping that coming off beta blockers and diuretics tomorrow will allow him to get a decent night's sleep for the first time. He's well though, and his heart is steady and beating at around his norm of 50.

I am determined to school Jazz tomorrow and get him out to a competition soon!

C