Friday 23rd January

Today it was really windy and the direction in which the wind was coming from meant it was coming straight in the indoor school, so it made it very cold and also very noisy!!

So today Blossom was very uptight about things as she really doesn’t like the wind. So today I didn’t do very much with her, I started with lots of friendly game and we then played stick to me around the arena so she could see all the scary corners as they were really noisy.

We then played with circling game and really just worked on getting her to bend the correct way on the circle and to keep her focus on me.

Today with Smarty I decided to ride him as he is now fully recovered, today I also decided to try him in my myler bit as I haven’t found a bit that I think he likes yet so thought it was worth a try.

Once we played I then saddled and mounted and started with ride the rail in walk and trot and also added in some stop and back up transitions. He was really leaning on the bit today, so we worked on getting him to be softer and to basically stop leaning as this is quite a bad habit he has. He isn’t trying to run off with me or anything, but if I apply pressure he leans into it instead of yielding. So today was mostly working on this.

We then had a little canter and again today he done his little run sideways off the circle with me and as soon as he done it I bent him to a stop, I think he done it another couple of times and I done the same thing and I think this must have worked as he stopped doing it after this. So my original thought that he might have been in pain could still be right of course, but I think this is more a learn behaviour he has learnt over the yeas.

I spoke to Eddy about this just after it happened and he suggested that I also attach the side of the halter to the bit using the reins and when I use the reins it will also apply pressure on the halter so will help me teach him not to lean on the pressure and to yield instead. In a way it is actually working very similar to how the cradle bridles work.. So it will be interesting to see how this goes over the next couple of days..