It’s been a while since my last post, and I think the main horsey thing to report is that the cob can now do a walk pirouette…although it wasn’t a deliberate movement.
The cob is a very clever horse, actually, she believes she can see the future and read minds…and that can make schooling a tiny bit difficult. So, how did the pirouette come about…I asked her to ride a good corner…
We school on a patch of sand in one of the fields. It’s not huge and not exactly level, but it does the job. However, the size and gradient does mean that you choose your places to canter carefully. To be honest, there are two corners I canter in…and the cob knows this. So, what she likes to do is cut off the corner and canter. I don’t allow her to cut off the corner as we don’t have enough space to ignore large parts of it, and, also, she should know better. So, we approached the corner in walk with the aim of walking by without a canter transition, and she started cutting it. Anyway, this, somehow changed to a really good walk pirouette, and we were facing the other way. In shock, we walked on, I applied the correct aids for a walk pirouette…and blow me, she did it again.
Admittedly, this did not solve the corner problem, only some 15 minutes later could we trot a nice (ish) corner without throwing all our toys out the pram, but, all the same, I was rather chuffed.
I think she may regret this move, as I found my ‘dressage for the young rider’ book and, whilst neither of us are particularly young, I have my eye on a piaffe!
