birthday resolutions

Yesterday the mileometer clocked up another year and I was ably assisted in my celebration of the event by Di along with my husband and child ( that being two separate humans). We had an 'eat until you burst'  Chinese buffet, swilled down with a drop of the pink stuff. It was a lovely lunch and once home, Di and I mulled over our horsey lives, with a glass of white wine to help of course. Thanks Di.

Before lunch I managed a ridden session with Moo; his birthday treat was to be a star :-) I have changed our warm-up and after a very short period relaxing down in walk we went forwards to trot; again on a long rein but not expecting the 'down' until being truly warmed up. This is quite a tricky process (and why I've avoided it for some time) as if I use my hands to slow him then I can't get the relaxation but I have to slow him to get the 'through' feeling and all his muscles warmed up and moving freely. So just the same as in the walk work, I turned him every time I felt the kettle starting to boil! No hands to create the turn just soft fingers to ask for the correct flexion and seat/legs/weight to define the turns. After about twenty minutes of weird shapes around the school he was really feeling relaxed, still rushing a bit but much better. We finished (after a walk break) with some giravolta work in trot coupled with some shortened trot work.

Today we continued the same warm up routine and he was a little quicker to the stretch but still rushing a bit too much, we did some nice trot/halt/rein-back transitions and then before a relaxing (well it's supposed to be) walk round the fields we had a short canter up the hill...really bouncy and short, a pleasure to sit on if a little tricky to pull up from hehehe.

Ah, the birthday resolution? To kick myself up the bum and get on with things ;-)