I've been a good girl.

Ooh I did not want to ride today. It's cold. It's wet. It's blowy. It's not very nice!

But I have cleaned all my disgusting tack from the weekend hunt and ridden Ace and Jazz in the barn.

Ace was most dischuffed. He is a lovely forward going horse and he really does not like having to walk and walk and walk. He will buck if I don't at least let him jog, so we did do a bit of jogging 10m circles. We got some nice shoulder-in  in walk, some good leg yield, some good halts staying forward and round. Then he threw his toys out of his pram, wouldn't do a free walk, set his back, bucked when I put my leg on and was a bit of a naughty boy. I laughed, sent him forwards overbent (to keep his back swinging freely) and eventually he gave up and swung into a nice free walk with his head out forwards instead of curled under. A good bit of discipline learned without a fight :-)

Jazz was just in a wonderful mood. I thought he would be stiff with the cold and wet, but none of it. He walked off beautifully loose and we practised halting and turning without any rein aids. Then we did jog half pass (there isn't enough room for proper trot half pass, so we did a loose and "up" jog instead). Then walk canter walk. Sublime. Then a flying change on each leg. Brilliant. We can't have been in there more than 10 minutes but there was no point in doing any more than that, he'd been gorgeous!

I feel I deserve my afternoon snooze now.

C