First Canter :)

He has been progressing really well over the last couple of weeks, with trot work, poles and bending. I am very pleased with him and it is obvious that he is enjoying himself as he is always excited to come in and do his little bit of fun work :) He chases Flea away as he wants to be the one who comes in and gets all the attention!

Although this day he was obviously mid sleeep when I went to get him in :D poor boy, wouldn't stop yawning!

He has had the physio come down and give him some wonderful massages too, which he thoroughly enjoys and it means he should be using all his body properly now that work is beginning :)

So today I decided that he was ready to try some canter and he was pretty good for his first time at it with a person riding him. He went down the long side on each rein, and we left it their as he is probably not quite balanced enough for cornering and seeing as it was his first time I didn't want to push him.
However, we will work on it, as once summer is over his work load will decrease due to me having less time being back at school, so I would like to have him at a reasonably good stage before he has the winter break :)

I will say though that I think he is the slowest race horse in the world, bless him, moves in slow motion at times I am sure of it! haaa. I can't complain though as I most definitely prefer that then for him to be some crazy machine!

The Arena Work Begins Here

Here's a picture of the first time I got on him;



I'll try get some more now as we have started doing some proper arena work :)


He is walking over poles, around blocks, and today was the first day of trotting with me riding him!
He was a little resistant to trot but I picked up a schooling whip, (brave I know) which he actually didn't care about, and with a little tap on the shoulder he broke into trot and did a few strides down the long side in quite a controlled and balanced manner :)

I will work on trot work and getting him to respond to my leg more but he is doing so amazingly well!
He is Mr. Chill now, such a different horse to when we got him..maybe a little too chilled at times, ahahaa.
He is very responsive when it comes to turning and stopping, all that long reining has come to good use and surprisingly he can manage to walk in a reasonably straight line!

I think the arena has become a safe zone, somewhere where he feels confident and is happy to do anything. Some more long reining around the fields and hopefully he will start to feel safe everywhere, and will make him a bit more spook proof.