While I've been confined to bed with a nasty lurgy during the latter part of this week, it's been a much more productive weekend as we start to gear up for 2012.
Tigre
Last weekend our friend, neighbour and GP star Dan came to ride Tigre with a view to schooling him on and competing him for us this season. He really does need a rider of this calibre to bring out the best in him. It was a good session, Dan was spot on in his analysis of T's schooling needs and we were delighted to agree a deal for Dan to ride him henceforth three times weekly, which began on Wednesday.
I was able to watch their session on Saturday, conducted at Dan's, which was the first time Tigre had been off the farm in months. He was on his toes to begin with but the work didn't give him much opportunity for distractions, just as a focused schooling session should! The main issue to be worked through lies in achieving true connection through his back, something which has been an issue for him throughout. He lacks confidence in this and will benefit hugely from having a very correct and advanced rider to guide him through it. He has a tendency to resort to that Luso piston trot thing at times but when he goes forward and allows the thrust to come from behind, his shoulders relax and he really starts to move, and produced some beautiful extensions.
His lateral flexibility had also improved noticeably, so we were very pleased with how it's going.
Also I must just say this - the difference between someone like me and someone like Dan was really brought home - setting aside the obvious skill gap in riding - he got on in the yard, rode straight out past the mares, into his yard and started schooling whereas I, in that position, would have lunged him first and then gone back a day or two later to ride if the weather was nice. I very much enjoy being around people who just get on with it like that :)
My clipping skills might be said to be "under-developed" so I arranged with my good friend Liz for her to visit us today to do the deed, as he is far too woolly for proper work. He has always been good to clip but this is the first time he's had a full clip and also the first time in which we are planning for him to be out competing with a professional rider, so it needed to be a good job.
Notwithstanding the industrial clippers which are (a) noisy and (b) the length of my forearm, he was an absolute star, standing there unrestrained while Liz worked her way around him. He was a little unsure about being clipped up around his ears but stood like a pro to have it all done, including his head. Bless his heart, he's such a good boy. Liz did an excellent job and he was soon standing in a lake of his own fur, wondering who the hell had turned the thermometer down.
Quinito
We had a lesson with Mandy on Saturday afternoon, culminating in an exercise in canter that I really liked: 20m circle ensuring clean active canter, then at A plie to E, and immediately canter shoulder in, straighten for the corner and repeat plie C-B and SI again. This went really well on the right rein; as expected a little more sticky on his stiffer left rein and he died a bit in the shoulder in, so we alternated the plie with a straight line and that helped. Really nice exercise and a good way to start work towards pirouette. Still feeling at best sub-optimal, I also felt quite pleased with myself, having spent the previous two days in bed with only a loo roll, a pack of strepsils and a laptop for company.
Today after our clipping session with Tigre Liz and I had a schooling session with Q. Time was knocking on and light failing so I just did a quick warmup before offering Liz a ride on him. She had seen his tendency to not be as active as he needs to be in canter, and my tendency to drop through my sternum in transitions up and down, so we did a bit of work on that to improve the canter. Liz then put him through his paces, found his tendency to wriggle any which way in favour of going straight and did some work with him on simple changes, doing a rather better of it than I customarily do :)
I always enjoy watching my horses being ridden by riders that I respect and had the good fortune to do that twice this weekend. Which was nice.
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