The way to heaven is on horseback

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...

For a while when I've been reading some things recently I started playing with the idea that backwards to go forwards might make more sense than I initially thought so yesterday towards the end of my riding lesson we started playing with that. Not long after we did that I was able to get Gatsby in to an outline and forwards. I could really feel his hind quarters coming underneath him and there was power behind his trot.  When I first started working with him I got a really nice stretch and forward moving walk, from the beginning I wanted to make sure that he was responsive and listening to me. When I picked him up it took a bit more convincing but eventually I was able to move him up in to the outline, it wasn't as good as the lesson we had before but it was still there. The most important thing to me was that we were getting the outline more and more often. I remember a time when I got it once every few months now I'm getting it nearly every week and I love the feelin...