Yesterday evening Vin and I had a lesson with Jo.
It’s been six weeks since her last visit, she gave me a load of homework to work on in her absence.
Which, you may be surprised to learn, we’ve been working on.
Apart from the odd hack around the countryside. And the Matt Ryan clinic. And competing at Allenshill last weekend. And the odd day of not riding when I really should have been.
But we have; we’ve worked fairly hard on the exercises she left us with.
Last night it was light enough for us to leave the floodlights switched off.
So we did about 20 minutes pure flatwork and about 20 minutes gridwork (poles on the ground).
Jo set us some interesting challenges but the one thing she said was that Vin’s flatwork in general, canterwork in particular and up- and downwards canter transitions in particular particular (I really can say that!) make him unrecognisable (in a good way) compared to the horse she first saw before Christmas.
All down to the homework she set us last time.
But she’s right, we are better (though I wouldn’t have believed it to be possible because I thought we were a pretty tight pair), we have improved.
Vin gave me flying changes last night and he gave them easily.
The first is is a Very Big Thing in the world of equestrianism, the second is So Big It’s Beyond Description.
After Jo had gone while I was grooming Vin in his stable I suddenly realised (how stupid am I that it’s taken me so long? Don’t answer that!) that if we took my surname and his nickname he’d be Vinnie Jones!
Thank heavens his ‘proper’ name is something else.
But not much better really.
Anyway, this Saturday we’re off to a show jumping clinic.
Fingers, legs, ears, eyes and toes crossed around 14.30 on Saturday please. 🙂
B.