autumn

Well yesterday the rain had subsided and at times chinks of blue were letting the sun through but still pretty windy; that’s autumn I guess. The veg patch is slowing up and only a few tomatoes still ripening, still have peppers to harvest but they are slowing down and the chillies are still managing to ripen. Sadly my aubergines  are plentiful but very late and I doubt they’ll make full size unless this warm period keeps going. The lemon grass, coriander and basil have done very well and will be a definite for next year.

Thanks to Di tempting me with videos of liberty work I decided to have a liberty day with Chapsi. I noticed in one of the videos how when using a pedestal to stand the horse on became like the exercise ‘goat on a mountain top’ which has been very beneficial to Moo. Basically by asking a horse to stand all four feet close together you get an incredible stretch over the back whilst maintaining the connection of the hinds underneath the stomach.

So to begin with I thought I’d try just getting him to stand with his back feet on a mat rather than his fronts, LOL, no way was he going to halt with his hinds on there, in fact he was actively avoiding even treading on it with them by swinging his 1/4’s. Plan B, I placed two poles parallel to each other the width of the mat apart, the poles kept him straight and by asking for the walk on with one foot at a time I managed to get him to stand with his back feet (sometimes only one) on the mat. Finally I added a second mat so that he could comfortably stand with all four feet on mats, this we conquered and all in a very calm manner, the aim being ultimately to get him to stand with all four on ONE mat! We’ll see.

After the mat work I did some liberty lunging and then some lunging from the cordeo, his left rein is very tight to stretch and we’ve been working lots on this in our flexion work and I tried to follow this through into the lunge work. This is obviously a natural one sidedness and is something I want to address off rather than on-board, I think with a bit he would be more compelled to release to the left, not because it is a tension in his mouth/jaw it is, as so often, tightness in his neck but perhaps the bit would be less easy to ignore than the bitless? However the bitless flexion option should hopefully have less side effects, that’s my hope.

Moo was ridden in the school and we had some great moments in the trot using the system of slowing it right down, he feels much stronger now and in the rein back to trot transitions he was really together and up through them. We cooled off with a lovely stretchy walk down the track to the big field, he let me know he was up for canter but I asked him to stride out in the walk instead which he accepted with good grace.

No riding today as I’m coming down with a wretched cold, no big deal and hopefully gone in a day or so but I really don’t have any energy to work the boys. They are however in the stables, away from the flies and the gorgeous sunshine, think I’ll get a book and sit in the garden.