Physio, Fear and Education

The best thing I have done recently is to start seeing a physio to work on my back and core strength and my riding position. I see Becki Drewett of Personal Best Studio and now have a list of stretches and flexes to do to improve my riding.
 

Charlie's ridden education goes from strength to strength and Alastair my instructor now works him weekly. We have a 1 hour session where Alastair rides him for about 35 minutes and then I get on board and we work on my position and how I am riding him. A sort of 10 minute wow he feels great and then adjusting my ridden position while he enters the cool down stage.

This week both Alastair and I could really see and feel an improvement in us both.

 

I continue to lunge Charlie in the Pessoa once or twice a week and am really starting to see some big improvements. He used to be a little one sided in his work and this is definitely balancing up. I have been slowly introducing canter transitions -and this week we had 3 out of 4 good ones on both reins and he seems to be really understanding what he needs to do.

In a bad transition he either flings his head around or does a sort of leap into the air attempting to canter without using his back end. 

Hacking is another story. I had been doing my master plan of hike and hack quite successfully until....

We had the dentist out and Pete discovered Charlie had a periodontal pocket in his lower left jaw right near the back. He had this cleaned out flushed and filled and was put on bute for 5 days this was on the 21st October. Unfortunately the vet said ok to ride ..... He was wrong.

We hacked out leading then riding and he reared and napped even before we left the yard. This was repeated in Coaley so we walked most of the way and then rode back up peak lane.

So was it his mouth or the fact I was forced to feed him with the Bute.

He is now on nothing but his herbs.

He has been on Marigold, Camomile and Valerian since 8th October so that is 3.5 weeks.

And finally I have booked myself on a Fear Makeover workshop on 9th November.

And here a photo of Alastair riding Charlie.