Friday, August 15, 2008

Really, really hot

That'll teach me to complain about the heat in Nebraska. Now it's crazy hot here, too. I think it was over 100 yesterday, and it must have been near 100 today, too. Not the best riding weather!

In spite of the heat, Willow was rambunctious tonight. I usually warm up in walk and trot, but she was just being jiggy and explosive, so I finally sent her into canter to let off some steam. We cantered about 57 times around to the left (OK, kidding, not that many) and a similar amount to the right. As we went round and round, I actually had time to reflect that a year ago, Willow could never have maintained a first-level canter for anywhere near that long. I also thought to myself that I should experiment with warming up in canter in the future. Willow is half TB, after all. I once read that if your horse likes to warm up in canter it's a good thing to do, because canter is the hardest gait for the horse to maintain tension and blockages in.

After that marathon of a warmup, we had a very nice schooling session. We did collected trot to half steps to collected trot and finished with lots and lots of quick trot-canter-trot transitions.

If tomorrow's ride goes well, on Sunday I'm going to introduce the double bridle.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Half Pass Girl,

I would like to speak with you about a couple of things and did not see an email address. I am with the Horse Radio Network. Drop me an email at geeks@horseradionetwork.com.

Thanks, Glenn the Geek