more of the same

The horses were shod last weekend, but on Saturday the ground (and the school) was rock hard. So although I did ride Fi, it was walk work only. The other two had the day off.

On Sunday we had our extra jockey around. It was very windy in the morning so on the grounds of risk, we just turned them out. But it had eased a bit by the afternoon - initially I still felt it was too risky for Fi, so I just worked her a little from the ground. The wind continued to ease so we threw tack on Duds and Rosie and rode them together in "follow my leader" mode in the school. Rosie seems to be getting the idea of this a bit more, and is gaining in confidence. At the faster gaits (trot, canter), she can still tend to take an inner track and not only catch up, but start to over take. D copes with this more easily than mum - mum's back affects her balance when Rosie goes sideways. We swapped as well, which meant I could feel how Rosie behaved when she was following. She can get a little strong and you get the feeling she is not really listening to the rider as much as I'd like. Something to work on.

By the time we finished, my guilt had increased as much as the wind had decreased, so Fi got saddled up and ridden while D and mum tidied up the tack from the other two.

Last night Emila Faurie was doing a demo at Gleneagles. It was an interesting evening, despite two of the planned demo horses being no-shows. (one was there but trotted up lame). The main themes that came up were

- riding forward: he said we all rode so slow, but talked so fast !
- downward transitions: encouraged riders not to use the rein and to ride them forward

but all done with a great deal of sympathy to the horse.

Today it was windy again, but I bunged to western saddle on Fi and did what I could. It was a bit hairy to say the least. For example, there is a oak seedling between the arena and the veggie patch. It still has (dead) leaves on it and they rattle in the wind. The wind was gusty and intermittent, so they would suddenly rattle - which would set Fi off.

I had wanted to work on the dressage test for next weekend (12), but that was not going to be possible so it seemed like a good opportunity to work on focus and "submission" (to the aids). I used one of the exercises from last night: work on a circle and reduce it. At the level I was using it (rather than the rather gorgeous dressage horses from last night !) it was about not losing the shoulder. riding the curve of the smaller circle without too much neck bend, activating the inside hand, and all the time asking for focus and softness. When the smaller circle is good, ride the horse forward out on to the bigger circle.

This was a useful exercise even in walk. I then also did some trot-walk transitions, the circle exercise in trot. And finished up with a couple of canter transitions on both reins (on a 20m circle).

We worked mainly at one end of the school (thanks to the scary Oak treelet).

Afterwards we turned the three bigger horses out without their rugs on, it being such a mild day. They only got (stable) rugs back on for the night at around 21:30.

The bad news is that when we went to fetch the horses in (at around 5pm as the evenings are drawing out again), Fi looked lame. She looked sore in the stable when I was there at half nine :( I'll just have to see how she is tomorrow.