Wednesday 29th April

Excellent day today!!!! He gets better everyday and is such an pleasure to work with:. He came out thinking very sideways. We went round with his quarters in for a while until eventually he realised that I wasn't going to give up and he was going to have to do some proper work. As soon as he went a bit straighter he really concentrated on what I was asking. I'm mainly working on keeping him straight at the moment, especially keeping his head from tilting. I've been playing with various ideas to show him what I want and finally today I found the key. It certainly isn't a long term solution, but for the moment it'll do and get the idea across to him. He always tilts so that his nose is pointing right, this is particularly bad on he left rein but he does it on both reins. I discovered that if I raise my right hand a little above the left one his head comes straight YAY. Now obviously I can't ride him like this forever but at least I've found a way to get it straight for the moment. Apart from that I worked on keeping the rest of him straight and balanced. We did tons of transitions and he just got better and better. I am even beginning to get somewhere in the canter. I have been asking him to go slower and slower until he almost breaks and concentrating on keeping him as straight as possible. There are only a few good strides in amongst the rushed head in the air ones but they do feel great when they happen and they're happening more and more often. I have another video but this one may be even more irritating than the last one if that's possible!!! But it shows his maddening crab walk at the beginning and some really nice trot at the end. Also I think that my leg position is improving :)

After our ridden work we did some Spanish walk in hand and again this was the best yet. The frustrating thing with the SW is that I know he's rather good at it (and loves it) but I'm terrible at asking him for it! However today I obviously was hitting the right buttons and I was really pleased. It wasn't really forward enough but at least I managed to convey to him that I wanted both legs going at the same time. I'm quite good at doing one side or the other but I simply couldn't explain to him that I wanted both, really irritating as he does it beautifully for Freddie. The other thing that we really must work on with this now I can actually get him to do it is straightness we wander around everywhere! Terrible really. But I am so so so SO pleased to have got him doing both legs for more than 3 steps. We then had a little play at liberty, he's so responsive to my body language it's such fun. Really annoyingly I managed to not do any in front of the camera which was not pointing where I thought it was!