Not another first?

I was waiting for the vet for Woody's second flu/tet jab and it was pouring down with rain, so I took Ace into the barn again today. To give him something new to do  I thought we would try halt/trot/halt. To give you an idea of just how clever he is, I cannot warm up either trot or canter in the barn, it is too small to continue for long at more than walk, and the surface is not good enough to canter the bend. So his canter to walk transition yesterday was all the more spectacular from having been done with no canter warm-up.

I have never tried halt/trot with him before, but he got it on about the third request with no walk strides. It took him only a couple more to get the trot/halt pretty well too, and then when I turned around he did it without further halfway attempts on the other rein.

Is he a quick learner? I would have to say that the answer to this is no. On the ground, for things like learning which box is his, he has been a very slow learner. I think where this apparent speed of learning is coming from is that he is so well constructed for what he is being asked to do that it is simply a question of finding the right aid and applying it at the right moment. The aid for halt/trot, for him, is to apply the leg at the calf and half-lighten the seat, as if you were going to trot away in rising trot. His back follows the lightened seat up, and the forward aid sends him forward into trot. Done!

Woody was well-sound this morning on the lunge, so there is no need to back off his work. Quite the reverse, he was probably as loose and flowing as I have ever seen him, with the exception of the day he chose to do medium trot. The vet was very interested in how he has changed and we had quite a conversation about how his rehab was going. This is a vet who hasn't treated me with much respect up til now (not rude, just a bit patronising) so that was really nice.

It has stopped raining now so I have to go out and get a serious hack into Radar.

C