No after effects for Woody.

I loaded Woody into the lorry this morning and he did not bat an eyelid. I left him tied up (to a piece of twine so thin it would have broken if he breathed on it), and the partition shut (using a tissue to keep it closed, just in case!) and went back into the tack room and waited. Nothing. Quiet as a lamb. Walked back down the ramp in a gentle saunter, completely unbothered. Considering the last time he was in it he spent a fair amount of time upside down, that's pretty positive, don't you think?

I rode him then, and he was totally sound. He was in a bit of a spring mood and kept moving off the mounting block (something his owner warned me about and he has done before), but I told him off and he came into line, literally and figuratively. He has begun to take much more of a contact, which is making it much easier to keep him in a rythmn. His problems with right canter lead have completely disappeared, which I take to be a sign that he his much more even through his body and on his feet. I plan to do his first ever dressage competition, at the age of ten, next week.

I have a full plan of other tests that he needs to pass in the next couple of months before I can put him up for rehoming with total confidence.

Radar has had a lot of trotting up  hills as a pipe-opener before Saturday. I hope the weather holds, it's a meet on flat ground with plenty of hedges.  We had some fun with a tractor. I stopped and let it go before me so it would clear the road, and then I cantered up after it. We caught it up half way up the hill and then had to slow down until it reached the top. The farmer looked in his mirror and got the shock of his life to see Radar up his tailpipe :-)

If Ace is going to continue to be such a good boy at letters, I plan to do elementary on him, just because I will enjoy it more than novice tests. I spent a short time this morning, before my plans become too set, testing whether he could walk to canter at A, do a 10m canter circle at the end of the long side, then pass C and into two 10 m half circles with a simple change in the middle. Even tired from yesterday, he can, so  E50 in 2 weeks time will be our next test, again if the weather holds.

Ace was very interesting yesterday.  It was noticeable how he shrunk back "inside himself" in his head and his paces, presumably due to being in a strange place with lots of other horses around and being expected to work. As you know, he behaved very well, but under those conditions he doesn't yet produce the extravagant paces that he has at home. I'm not going to push him, because he is an introverted soul and it will only upset him. He will get there in time.  It will be interesting to see whether a more complicated test takes his mind off his concerns as he focusses on the movement, or if it will be too much for him to cope with. Only trying it will tell and I can always stop the test if I'm not happy.

I'm also only going to do one test. Each time we have done two, it's been clear that his "oomph" has run out somewhere in the second warm-up. There were times yesterday he didn't even want to walk round to keep warm in the wind and would have preferred to stand still. So that will be another experiment.

C