26th March. VERY windy schooling and digital art.

Yesterday I logged on to the New Riders forum to discover that an artistic member Abisheridee had done a lovely digital painting of Xaile.  Not only had she the good taste to pick Xaile to paint she also picked my favourite photo of him.  I particularly like the way she's done his nose.  His nose is really special- it's seriously prehensile.

It was even windier today than yesterday but schooling still had to happen.  The wind was definitely upsetting him and he was inclined to walk like a crab to keep an eye on the horse walker that was blowing about in the wind.  It was really hard to keep him straight in walk but easier in trot and canter.  

We started off with a good long canter round the school to settle him.  He really loves cantering and it is so very comfortable that it's tempting to do nothing else.  However he really needs more work on his walk and trot, so once we'd done a little more work on simple/flying changes we concentrated on trot and walk trot transitions.  I also was really pleased to find that I could get him working in a much longer lower outline though I'm reluctant to work him too low as I feel that this would put him on his forehand and I have heard that it can put a strain on their backs and pelvises.  We did lots of circles and increasing and decreasing circle size and quarters in and out.  He was a very good boy and tried very hard and was only a little distracted when the horses in the neighbouring field went charging around.

I then let him have a bit more fun canter work.  There were 2 jumps up in the school so we did a figure of 8 around them and alternated between flying changes and simple changes.

Then I realised that we'd been working for 3/4 hour and it was probably enough as I wanted to get some ground work in.  So I walked him round on a loose rein, or at least I tried to.  The wind had got even stronger and I simply couldn't get him to walk straight up the long side by the walker.  So we had a rather long and frustrating battle about it.  But I did eventually win.

After that we did some work on his Spanish walk.  It is now so consistent and smooth with each individual leg that I thought it was time for me to try to put the two sides together. I found it really hard to convince him to pick the outside leg up but we got there eventually but this just lead to him only doing that side.  Finally something clicked and I managed to get inside leg, outside leg, inside leg I was so pleased with this that we stopped there.