Even Brrrrr-er

Minus five this morning. The arena was too slippery to risk Ace doing anything silly on, but Jazz is a sensible boy these days so we braved the cold, and it was cold all right!!  We did some walk, walk shoulder in, walk travers, walk half pass. Trot was no good, he couldn't trust the surface to push off with any power, but canter, where the push is on two legs at the same time, was fine. So we did some counter canter to a corner and flying change. There were only two sides good enough to do that on, so we kept turning round and going back the other way. At one point I was insisting on him staying straight, and he didn't want to so he stopped. I wondered if he would/could do halt to canter, so I put a canter aid on, and off he went. Easy peasy!  I finished with two flying changes on the one 40m side, though I had to loop him to get the message that I meant him to change. On the whole though, he is doing a change with a lighter and lighter signal and less need to be put into a counter bend to make him change. This bodes very well for tempis!

I am so enjoying having a horse working at this level who is strong and mature. Tetley was just about getting there when I had to let him go and it is great to have a horse who can do all this clever stuff :-)  And I was musing about how wonderful it is to have a horse who you can leave for a week on end with no work, jump on and know that not only is he going to behave sensibly, but that the chances are he will also do some darned good work without much of a warm-up, never mind having to work at getting him back to the level he left off at last time.

C.