A great few days with Guinness...

XC practise
This weekend, Guinness and I brushed up on our cross country skills with a trip to Attington with my friend Louise and her horse Blondie. The weather was a little on the damp side, but compared to previous XC schooling experiences, Guinness warmed up extremely well and felt very relaxed. He was however a little pre-occupied with where Blondie was at first and kept not looking at the fence until stride before take off!!! Once we settled in to a better rythmn and I had his attention, Guinness was taking the jumps in his usual bold style. We jumped coffins, corners, houses on an angle and a scopey trakhener. I was very pleased to pop a double of skinnies on a dog leg and I feel much more confident about Aston le Walls this coming weekend!

Blondie and Guinness are becoming good buddies with all their recent outings together. I had to wait 10 minutes before I could tack up as they were to engrossed in grooming each other!

Amazing flatwork sessions!!
I had an amazing flatwork session this morning. I'm loving my new warm up routine which goes as follows:

• Walk on a long rein then collect the walk (still on a long rein) with belly button and core, then release and lengthen stride. This really gets Guinness walking out without me having to use my leg at all.
• Walk on a long rein shoulder in, then leg yield. Repeat on both reins. Gets Guinness accepting my leg but also lighter off my aids.
• Free walk on a long rein - pick up to medium walk - free walk on a long rein, repeat several times. This gets Guinness coming up into my contact in an accepting way, and helps him to not fuss with the bit, which has always been one of his 'thoroghbredy' weaknesses.
• Medium walk, shoulder in- leg yield - traver - half pass. Repeat on both reins.
  
• Then I do my canter warm up which involves a lot of forward and collect, using my core and belly button. I do inside and outside flexion on both reins and counter canter. This helps with his balance and helps him to come up in the shoulder.
  
• Then I do my trot warm up. Trot on a long rein, including shoulder in and leg yield. Then pick up to working trot, shoulder in- leg yeild - traver - half pass.
• Then work the trot medium on a circle then collect, then back to medium, just to get him lighter and more responsive off my aids.

All the above usually takes me about 25 minutes with a few walk breaks (to catch my breath!) and although I will then probably only do about 20mins of actual 'schooling' (followed by 5-10 mins cool down) I feel it's more productive this way than to rush the warm up and spend 40 minutes schooling when you haven't got all the buttons quite tuned which makes practising anything new much harder.

Today the traver just seemed to click and I felt like we really nailed the canter half pass for the very first time!! Plus Guinness trot mediums felt like he was about to dislocate his shoulders he was powering through from behind so much! Could not stop grinning and cuddling my amazing pony after and he deservedly got half a manger of carrots as a thank you!!! 

Very excited about my first affiliated elementary tests in a few weeks.... just got to get through the One Day event first!!!!