Change(s) as good as a rest!

More good fun with Jack today as we learnt a new exercise for improving his canter! Jack is proud of flying changes as he is good at them. We started in true canter, moved away from the track rode straight with a change to counter canter and then on a few strides before a change to true canter. This exercise as well as feeling pretty smart worked wonders for his engagement and the canter after and subsequent trot work was dreamy. Finished the session trying to get my head around riding accurate lines in half pass. Once again I got a bit muddled until I just pointed his ears where I wanted to end up and then he does the rest. Clever Jack boy :)

Easter Rush:)

I enjoyed the Easter break though there has not been very much downtime. I had a glorious ride on Jack using the pole work exercise set up for the Easter Pony Clubbers and marvelled at the effect the exercise had on Jack. Jack was delighted to work around over and in between the poles and we gradually produced better and better paces until I was in heaven and he was offering me the most fantastic leg yield I have ever sat on- Go Jack Go! The medium canter work over the poles was fun too even if we did resort to jumping a few of them! It was simply too tempting to be riding an advanced event horse and not play about with taking strides out.
Next it was Sebastian's turn and he was less than impressed! Eventually the poles worked a little magic and the canter improved though he did not relish the session as much as his friend....

Good Friday saw me practising my tests for the Trailblazers 2nd Round with Sebastian and Sean visited the yard to see how the boys were progressing and to see what Sebastian thought of Equissage.

Saturday dawned and merged into a very long day- first stop MKEC where we competed and placed 8th in the Elementary and about 13th in the Novice. Not our finest performance but we didn't disgrace ourselves and Sebastian and I reached a new level of understanding about accepting my requests to halt and walk on the centre line so we have made progress .
Next stop Kent and a lecture demo for BRC Area 10- fortunately for the boys we didn't need our equine partners as we worked with local horse and rider combinations. Long day we finally got back at about 2.30 in the morning too tired to think.

Easter Monday was spent catching up and today I have just enjoyed a wonderful ride on Jack in the sunshine with the blossom floating across the arena like confetti- Jack was not thrilled with the perfume however he gave me his full effort and attention- Jack the wonder horse is back. He and Ginty are now enjoying an afternoon sunbathing in the field.

STOP PRESS- look out for my article in CTR Magazine Issue 203 out tomorrow. I consider the importance of good stable management.