Conditions Life has been good. Very nice weather with highs in the 70's. no bug problems yet. Footing has been great for riding outside in the FEI ring and hacking.

Caddymaster Super news for Caddy he is back in form. I absolutely could ride a PSG test next weekend with reasonable expectations of scores in the mid 60's. I've been working as outlined in my past posts - but including a real focused "speed control" to the warm-up. So once he is going and loose I work forward back, forward back in trot and canter. He immediately jumps forward from my calf and comes back from my core - but can immediately spring forward from my calf again - AND stay straight. Very simple concepts but hugely essential.

Once this is working everything else is quite easy including the pirouettes. Working on the 2 tempes and should be ready for I1 this season -YIPPEE

TIA As usual work is good and easy. Changes are progressing well and starting to work seriously on sequence changes. The other work that used to be hard - say extended canter is now very easy. Still playing with the pi/pa with good results. She is such a great horse for me. It only takes time - nothing is a problem

Boogaloo Boo-Boo is being a very good boy. His canter is unbelievable, uphill, easy, - I've been working inside, outside, hacking and no naughtiness. and Fran (my trainer, his owner) is going to let me show him!!! The plan is for a schooling show this coming weekend. I'm going to enter 3rd 1, but I may do simple changes instead of the flying changes. The aim is to give him a really good ride.

Flying Changes So I got a comment about my blog re. Tia being slow with the changes. The reader, I believe, thought that she was SLOW to RESPOND to the aid - whereas I meant it was taking a LONGER period of time to teach her to change on my aids. There is also another website where schooling changes has recently been discussed. These discussions/comments got me thinking.

First, flying changes are very easy for the horse. Any sound horse, of any age, should be doing flying changes at liberty. You will likely not see them doing counter canter or simple changes through the walk at liberty - but they will do the flying changes, So the trick to flying changes (a movement the horse does naturally like it naturally trots) is to communicate to the horse that the change should be done at our request. So in this sense, the flying change is the RIDER'S problem.

Caddy, and Lego (the horse I had before Caddy) NEVER had any issues with the counter canter or the flying changes. Both did flying changes at a very young age. With Caddy, if the canter felt right I would ask and he would change and then I would leave it alone - he did correct changes as a 4 yo. Lego was similar, although not quite as talented.

Tia, is more talented, but more SENSITIVE. She gets SCARED if she is unsure of her BALANCE. The counter-canter was a huge challenge. I taught this in a very large field where I could make say a 30m counter-canter circle but had enough room so that at any time I could go to a 10m true canter circle, then back to the big counter canter circle - and I had no time agenda.

The very hardest thing with Tia was the free walk/med walk. She naturally has a very good quality walk. She can do a very high quality collected walk and her walk pirouettes have gotten 9's (from Janet Foy-Brown), but just dropping the contact, she would get worried and jig. It took a ton of time. If I rode her 60 minutes - 30 minutes of that would be the walk. I would relax and let her walk - if she jigged, I would relax and halt - then I would relax and let her walk. Soon enough, she would quietly walk the short side - but get tension with the long side. Then she could walk the long side, but not the diagonal. Then it was ok at home but a problem in the tests. It was not until my second show last year that I got a nice relaxed, safe, flat footed walk (showing 3rd level) and then the scores were in the 70's.