Fetch a paper bag!

Woody is so funny. When he gets upset about anything out on a hack, he hyperventilates. I don't mean that he breathes hard, I mean that he pants at 120 breaths a minute. In humans, that's a panic attack and it causes the brain to go hyper-oxygenated, which creates more panic. With a human, you get them to breathe into a paper bag, but I don't have one handy when I'm out riding :-)  He's as much of a dippy Dora as Jazz was, only he's an awful lot easier to control!

His mouth is incredibly sensitive, which is a bit of an issue for schooling, as he over-reacts to many quite gentle rein aids. I will need to desensitise that a little in order to do any dressage, but it will come as he trusts me more. Meanwhile, he cannot understand that I want him to go on, but not to jog. So I am having to let  him jog, because otherwise pushing him forwards to free his back and then asking for less speed starts the hyperventilation nicely!  His jog is not uncomfortable and at the moment I will settle for a free back, which will allow his feet to make the proper shape, rather than a backward thinking walk. He did eventually settle to lovely long swinging walk on a free rein for the last bit of the ride :-)

He was completely sound, from straight out of the barn, so we trotted a couple of times today. It will be very interesting to see how sound he is tomorrow.

I've also schooled Radar today, just in case the weather is really terrible tomorrow. It was pretty bad today, raining, but it could be a lot worse tomorrow so we got on with it. His trot work was really good straight away. Then he wanted to gallop, not canter, but he agreed in the end to do a slow relaxed canter. I'm happy when he takes a long time to do something like that because it means he gives himself a workout without me having to think up reasons to carry on working just to have him fit enought to hunt :-)

SH is busy in Ace's stable kitting out the solarium fittings and electricity supply. I am lucky that Ace's stable is only ten feet wide. It means that I can string a rope across 30 inches from the end and keep him under the lights easily. SH is fitting up a pole to hook two 250 watt poultry infra red lamps to, which I can slide to the right place over his back. We will then be able to experiment with height and timing. I don't want to cook him! Hopefully it will all be ready by the time the lights get here and we can give it a go. I don't know what I'm going to do if it fails, but hey, let's not go there til we know, eh?

C