A white rainbow!

I saw the most magical thing while I was hacking Woody today. We were in some quite dense mist and the sun started to burn it off. Overhead the sky was bright blue, but around us it was still quite thick. And then I saw a white rainbow. An arc of pure white in the mist. It followed me most of the way home, and it was one of the most magical things I have ever seen. I didn't even realise that it was possible to get a white rainbow.

Woody himself was improved yet again. He is even beginning to trust the bit enough to give little tugs at it to tell me what he wants.  He is, as I suspected he might, getting more and more forward going as he gets fitter and trusts his feet more, and today he spent a fair amount of time attempting to jog when I wanted to walk. He also gives me control of his head and neck far more of the time than he ever has before.

It is still tricky at times to get him to stride out in front, but it is both a combination of the fact that he is quite nervy to hack alone, and the fact that he still has memories of painful feet. The longer he works, the more relaxed he gets. He will also start out feeling as if he feels some of the stones, but quickly realises that they don't actually hurt, even though he can feel them, and by the time we are on our way home he stomps over anything without reacting.

His new frogs are slap bang in the centre of his feet, which is immensely pleasing. Symmetry from a sole view is one of the changes that we need to see, as it will indicate that his feet are balanced to the leg above them no matter what they look like from the front or side.. The old frog is pushing off to one side, so they look very odd with a big flap flopping over, but once those old ones shed, it will be much more obvious that the new ones are perfectly placed.

I schooled Ace first thing. I have been putting it off because I was afraid of how boisterous he was going to be, but he was a little sweetheart. He did one serious leapy nap to the stables, but I told him "no!" and he stopped and never tried it again. We did walk  to warm up -  10m lollipop tree, shoulder in and travers. The travers was particularly good, a real inwards bend of the bum. Then we trotted figures of eight and 10m circles and widened out to 20m. His response to my leg to move the circle bigger was perfect.

I cantered faster and slower on a circle then, which is the first time I have cantered him in goodness knows how long. Then we tried some figures of eight in canter with change of leg through trot, and I was smiling at how very much easier he is to ride than Jazz was. He was setting on me in the down transition and trying to pull at the rein, but all I have to do is hold on to it and he gives. He has a lovely, lovely mouth!  We got some nice transitions and I called it quits at that.

We had done maybe 40 minutes of serious schooling, a first for ages. And then I fell apart! I must have worked a lot harder than I thought I had, because  I could barely get him untacked I was so dizzy, and the cough was violent. Thankfully I recovered enough by being slow about rugging up and turning him and Radar out to get back into shape to hack Woody out, because that wasn't optional if we want his brilliant progress to continue.

Three lovely boys, aren't I lucky?

C