the cherry on the cake

I haven't worked Moo the last few days (trying not to have too great expectations) but I've had two good seesions in the school with Chapsi.
We start our school sessions at liberty; stopping, starting, backing up and using voice and body as aids. Yesterday we then played with the cordeo; introducing stopping and backing from a light upwards touch. We continued with in-hand trot transitions and finished eating some lush grass on the way back up to the yard.
Today we continued with some work on the ground tying. This is so very hard for a four year old with a busy brain...but that's just the reason it is important. We finished again with the trot transitions but this time at liberty, oh he can be such a good boy.
One of the upsides of this work is that when I lead Chapsi and Peanut pone down to the furthest grazing spot they are well behaved and walk out well, neither of them pulling or trailing.
Oh, nearly forgot, the cherry on the cake. When I was set the challenge of long reining with one unattached rein (see here) it started a conversation on the french bitless association about lunging and where it fits in to the horses education. It was suggested that lunging, far from being the initial means of exercising a horse, is actually the cherry on the cake...the final piece of the jigsaw. I'm not sure that I immediately grasped the importance of this statement BUT as I see my young horse develop on so many different levels I comprehend this better with each passing day.