Skip to main content

Canter work is really coming on

Today was my last riding lesson of the holidays before I go back to school and then will only be riding on Saturdays again but I will be trying to get up on occasional Mondays to help Elaine out. I started off by grooming Gatsby and surprisingly he wasn't that muddy again, is this a sign that spring is around the corner? But just as I was getting used to that idea it started to snow, turning Gatsby's back from black to white, it soon stopped with only occasional flakes of snow. Because he was so clean I decided that I was going to attempt to plait his tail, that didn't last for long and really didn't work so in the end I gave in and just tacked him up, one day I will be able to plait his tail just not today! 

I started off by giving Gatsby a good ten minutes on a long rein allowing him to stretch and warm his muscles up before gradually picking up the contact and bringing him into a nice outline with a forward going walk, although I think that it could still do with a little bit more energy. I did some work on both reins and then moved on to doing some nice trot work, I let him have a bit of a longer rein to allow himself to get his coughing out the system that he tends to do and get his breathing sorted. I then did a fair bit in rising trot, making sure that it had a bounce to it, and that he was really listening to the leg. I then moved on to the sitting trot and this is where I have to be careful because sometimes I lose the impulsion that I have built up. Then I  moved up to doing the canter work, the first one I did on a 20 metre circle, I ended up asking at three different points on the circle because he kept falling out of it. Fiona then said evenutally it would be nice to be able to get him to canter in an outline but that wasn't the aim for today. Then I asked for him to canter and we went down the longside and as if to say 'stuff you' he cantered in an outline down the long side of the school Fiona, my mum and I were like :O WHAT?? We did quite a bit of the canter work building up to being able to do a full lap of the school which was great. I really feel like my canter is coming on in leaps and bounds. Gatsby was soon starting to anticipate what I wanted him to do and was trying to do it before I asked him to, even though I was asking in different areas of the school. So we then switched it up and decided to ask for a canter at either B or E. He wasn't expecting this but picked it up really well I was a bit like wow Gatsby! He's turning out to be such a nice horse, and so well behaved. I then finished by giving him 10 minutes walking on a loose rein allowing him to really stretch and cool his muscles down. He was then being used in the next lesson. 

The last time I had seen the girl that was going to be riding him she was really nervous, but today said that she wasn't feeling as nervous, she looked a bit but also sounded and talked in a more confident way. But it didn't help that the mounting block that we are using is starting to fall apart. When she stood on it and was getting ready to ride Gatsby the mounting block gave way. Now most of you know that Gatsby tends to be inpatient but for once he stood nice and still waiting for her to get on. We then decided that we would use the blocks that we use for the jumps to stand on and then get on that way. Fiona held the block so that it wouldn't move while I held the stirrup and held Gatsby's reins at the same time so that he wouldn't work off.

Until Next Time
A Girl With A Dream

Comments

  1. So glad to hear your canter is improving. You have been working so hard at it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you, I'm becoming so happy with it again! I will post some of the Video's soon :D

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Hey everyone feel free to leave me a comment and let me know what you think of my blog, feel free to ask any questions. Anonymous comments are welcome to!
Thanks for stopping by!
A Girl With A Dream

Popular posts from this blog

CON ARTIST - NICKI WILLIAMS - BEWARE

Okay so this post has taken me a while to post for several reasons but the main one being just how angry this woman has made me.  For those of you that have been following my blog for a long while you will know that back around October of 2016, I was introduced to a woman called Nicki Williams, she was a friend of a friend that was supposed to be opening a centre for rehoming and rescuing animals, but also for horses working with soldiers that has PTSD. We hit it off straight away and came what I thought to be good friends. However warning bells should have probably rang sooner. By January or February of last year the horses that I had agreed to look after (that she had got on loan) Bella and Arthur, she was being threatened that she would have them taken off her by the control of horses act, because she hadn't been paying the rent for the field. Although Nicki reassured me that she had done, she even showed my 'payments' that had been made to Angie. I ended up getti

possible broken hand x3.

hiya guys well it's been a few days and I was planning on updating you all today. Unfortunately I won't be able to go in to as much detail as I want to because I am having problems typing because it looks like for the third time I have broken my hand again!  In the exact same place, how rubbish is that? But they can't tell me because it will not show up for another two weeks on an X-ray so at the minute it's back in a splint and I've got to go back to hospital in two weeks.  Well Saturday I got to ride Gatsby again. We have been working on getting him in to an outline more consistantly but it took me seeing Fiona riding Pumpkin Pie for me to know what it was that I needed to do for Gatsby to work properly in to an outline. We got some really good work in the walk and trot (I have got pictures) and slowly we are starting to get it in the canter as well but by the time we move on to canter I tend to feel quite tired and weak on my left side. We did an exercise th

Hello strangers!

 Wow it feels like a life time ago since I updated my blog let alone since I actually started first writing this blog. So many things have changed and I’ve kept thinking about restarting this but every time I think about doing it life gets in the way and before you know it I just haven’t done it.  So where do I start, how about with the big fella himself. My midnight magic is now 8! He has a heart of gold and after a particularly rough year is definitely coming out of the other side. Magic is a jumping lover and if you let him pick I think that’s all he’d ever do. He’s spent a lot of time working on his flat work which in the long run has really helped to develop his jumping. Last year magic suffered a horrible injury, he damaged his suspensory ligament on his front left leg and on the same leg damaged the collateral ligament that goes to his coffin joint, unfortunately for him he had a pretty bleak prognosis, with only a 30% of being even field sound. With a little bit of luck, blood,