21st May - saddle fitter

Jill came to check the fit of Xaile's saddle today.  It was sitting too low behind and the flocking was more compressed on the left hand side.  This is not surprising given I know I have too much weight to the left and I know I sit too far back in the saddle.  But hopefully having it reflocked will make it a bit easier for me to sit better.

Xaile started really well and we did our flexions and counter flexions.  So I moved onto canter and for some reason this really wound him up and it took ages to get him slow and relaxed again.  While fighting a bit of a battle with him I had a couple of lightbulb moments.  The first was pretty obvious and I expect someone has already pointed it out to me and I just didn't take it in.  It is that if he's stiff on the right side it's generally because I have too much weight in my left side.  So if I concentrate on being more even with my weight he lightens on the right side.

The second lightbulb is also obvious but rather bigger.  Last week I worked out that to get a smooth walk trot transition I had to let him have his head a little to go forwards.  Why on earth it didn't occur to me to do the same thing in canter is beyond me.  But it dawned on me today that it should work and low and behold it did.  However he was rather whizzy today and I needed to do lots of slow calm work and lots of canter transistions wind him up so I did a couple to check it worked and then went back to halt walk and trot transitions.

I took a couple of condition photos while his saddle was being flocked.  I think his under neck muscle is reducing!!!