Napping or mindreading?

Radar hacked up to a friend's for breakfast today. I was late setting off, and we covered over three miles, including a rise of 200 feet, in exactly 20 minutes. He's fit! In case that doesn't mean much to you, any "normal" horse takes over half an hour to do that ride.

I rode the other two later this afternoon. Ace was a very good boy. It is howling a gale but he still worked well for me. He is improving in the walk/trot transitions and we also did some lengthening and shortening in trot. There are many young horses who would have behaved very  badly in a wind that high, but he did some serious work.

At one point I was doing a circle and I had it in my head that I was going to change the rein after that circle. Instead of completing the circle, Ace turned to change rein. It might have been a nap, but I am more inclined, with the timing and the location, that he felt my intention to change rein and thought he would oblige. There was nothing naughty or sharp about it, he just turned to go the other way. This is interesting. I am going to have to be VERY careful not to punish him for picking up minute signals of my future intentions. I remember teaching Scooby trot transitions. He would always trot before I wanted him to and I got cross with him. It was only much later that I realised he was trotting when I decided at which point (still in the future) I was going to ask him to trot, because he felt me decide "trot there" and took it as "trot now". I must not make the same mistake with Ace, his sensitivity is something to nurture, not destroy!


Jazz has got it. Medium trot  on demand. It is getting better every day; bigger, higher, more rythmic and he is holding it for longer. Today he held it around a corner too. He's also one stage closer to tempi changes in canter. He is accepting an aid to change to counter canter on a straight line and then back to true. I need to sharpen the first change and get it sooner off the bend, and not get my legs caught up in the H girth when I swap them over to get the other diagional! It's really quite funny, but it does not help :-)  Anyway, when I get it right, we have two changes about six strides apart, and I can work now on bringing that back to five and four and three. When I can get that, I can start to put a third one on the end, and we will have tempis.

In contrast to how brilliant those two have been Buttie has been a little monster. He found the only six inch space where the electric fence was juuuuuust high enough for him to creep underneath and has been on the arena nibbling kicking boards and leaving  his calling card for me to clear up. What a little tyke! It's wired off lower now, so beat that you little b*gger!


C