Training Update

Steele and I have been working away but the weather has not been horribly cooperative. Now that the ring is complete we've been doing some liberty work as well. He now stays right by me in the ring unless I send him away.

His behaviour seems to indicate that he enjoys his 'work'. Last night I decided to take advantage of a break in the rain to do a session. In the cross ties he now stands as still as you might wish. He also often picks up his legs as I try put on his protective boots - it started as a confusion- him thinking that I wanted to pick out his feet. I ignored that but everytime he put his foot down I would say 'good boy'. Yesterday all four feet stayed planted while the boots went on. Then on goes the cavesson and then the bridle. He opens his mouth for the bit as nice as you please.

We walked up to the ring and then when we entered I closed the gate and undid his lead line. He stayed beside me while I got the lunge line and whip ready. Our circles are looking much more round these days and he's got the 'walk', 'trot' and 'whoa' firgured out. He still wonders why he doesn't get to choose the gait or when the transition occurs but seems to believe me when I tell him that it's all fine. I've introduced canter on the lunge as well. After a few exciting moments he has that down as well. Yesterday he picked up the wrog lead- that doesn't seem to bother him he's balanced either way but I always ask him to go back to trot and then try again. This time when when I asked for trot he did a flying change and carried on. Clever monkey.

I think that the surcingle will be next. He's ready for it.

At the end I decided to take advantage of our awful weather and practice going through puddles. He was quite cooperative, bored even. Apparently he doesn't believe them to be the death traps that Irish did at his age.