Circles and Chickens

Lovely lesson Tuesday with Tori working the boy into a contact now and we both found it difficult but had some really nice moments. The way he is working I would be very surprised if he has any issues with pain just balance.

Everyone on the yard is very supportive and it has been suggested that we take Charlie off haylage and put him on plain old hay so we shall try that for a few weeks.

Following on from yesterday's lesson we worked with the Vienna reins slightly higher today to get Charlie working more upward in his shoulder. As Tori said yesterday it may take a little time to get used to this new setting haha what a joke he was positively simpering and we had some lovely work on the lunge.

I remembered to raise my hand to assist his head carriage and didnt step in front of his shoulder.

We were very focussed today because there had been an overlap of school booking and I was anticipating the 'are you nearly finished' shout from someone.

So Vienna reins and lunge line were swiftly removed and I popped on board. We had placed two coloured blocks either side of x to make sure we didn't fall in or out when we circled through X.

Well we were magnificent. Walking into the contact on large,circles, figure of eight, leg yield into trot. We did transitions walk trot walk we did trot circles not all by any means perfect but some very nice work indeed and no,not any, not even the slightest head toss.

I stop here to give readers an opportunity to cheer and applaud!

The allusion to hugging a big teddy bear for my arm use and position worked a treat every time I though Charlie felt a bit heavy on a rein I thought 'it may be me, hug a bear' I am after all the queen of locked elbows.

The 'someone' shout never came as unfortunately the bookee had a family crisis but none the less we were ready to leave and I didn't want to spoil our success by overdoing it.

The sun was shining so I thought 'what the heck' and we rode out of the school ( this was useful as it gave me the opportunity to practice mounted door opening and shutting). We trundled across the yard down the track and then turned sharp left to go up the track past the chickens to the house. Now this isn't far at all but...if you have a horse who gets anxious On hacks it is the top of the world.

Well again the boy did good. He met another horse being brought in just as we got to the bottom of the slope and the Farmers pickup was parked right in our way. He didn't bat an eyelid. As we got part way up I felt him hesitate so instead of pushing him on I asked him to halt using my stomach :D and then patted and walked on...it was a piece of cake. The first time we did this several weeks ago he bounced and tried to turn round. I just checked it was 12 jan I blogged it so the blog is working because it keeps me focussed on our progress.

So there we have it for some riding on a circle with a contact and riding up a farm track all on the same day is nothing but for Charlie and me its a champagne moment.