Flatwork schooling in the all-weather 20×60 outdoor
Vin and I put each other through our paces today. I’m determined to get him working in to his canter circles in a much calmer frame of mind and with considerably more suppleness. He’s determined to show me how much he doesn’t want to do things better.
When I lived in Somerset I used to school at Rosamund Green Farm with Robin Dumas. Robin (a hard but exceptionally thorough taskmaster) taught me a series of bending/suppling exercises that Mark Todd used to use.
This afternoon they came in very handy!
Forty minutes and many passes through the exercises on both reins and I was sitting on a supple, bendy equine.
And he knew he had been clever.
The side effect to all this wonderfulness was that I had unfortunately achieved a state of being absolutely shagged out; Vin was pretty cooked too.
But the effectiveness of the exercises is beyond question, we just need to be consistent and work at them.
And when I say ‘we’…
B.