Fun comes in threes

Ace and I went out for a hack. He isn't the bravest bunny the world has ever met, but he was quiet and sweet and he seemed to enjoy the change of scene from the arena. He steps around every patch on the road - damp, oil spills, pothole repairs, you name it he won't tread on it. He's like a child chanting "tread on a crack, you'll break your back, tread on a line you'll break your spine".

The roadwork did his feet no end of good. I've been worried about one of his front feet, which was curling inwards sideways at the heel because of the way he puts it to the floor. This week, his frog finally began to engage with the floor as his heels gradually decontract from the appalling shoes that I took off him in January. That has allowed him to take the weight across the whole of the back of his foot, and has already visibly changed the balance of the foot I was concerned about. I am very happy about it.

Jazz struggled to give me left bend but I got it by sending him forwards more strongly and holding onto the right rein until he gave in to it and bent his head to the left as he brought his shoulders around. He struggled again to give me left half pass and then I worked out that he was shoving my weight to the outside. My weight must move in the direction that I  want him to move, of course, because their instinctive movement is to put their body underneath yours. So I refused to allow him to shift me to the outside and  he proved that I was correct about where the problem was - he stopped dead and would not move at all!

When we did get moving again, the only way I could get half pass was to keep him overbent, both downwards and sideways, until he submitted. Then he did me two really nice ones, very light in the hand and I rewarded him by changing to medium trot.

WOW
WOW WOW WOW

Medium? More like extended!!  He has really cottoned on to this extending lark now. He has a proper gear change into it - the last stride of collected trot is the same as all the others that came before it, and the first stride of medium/extended is the same as all the others that come after it. It is explosive, like a sprinter powering out of the blocks. And he stops again too. I can hardly believe how quickly he is improving after taking two years to learn to do it at all, but I can tell you it is incredible fun  to ride!

And then Radar. Take a bow Radar! He is finally getting the hang of this thing called "schooling". He did some absolutely beautiful, slow, rythmic, balanced canter (think "sit in an upholstered rocking chair doing nothing" :-)  and THEN, amazingly, he consented to trot nicely AFTER cantering. H had to be persuaded, but he did it and this is a first!  The rest of the time he was less over-reactive than normal, and very sensitive on the aids, and generally very, very much better than he has ever been before. At this rate, I shall be swapping to schooling him in a snaffle.

C