Manu Mclean Clinic Day 2

What an exhausted pair we are! It was seriously hot today - 30 degrees but it felt like more. Poor Assegai had spent a restless 24 hours in a paddock by himself out at our friend's place and clearly hadn't been doing much eating as he was suddenly starving and trying to rip my arm off to eat any old dusty tussock of grass that appeared near us as we walked up to the stable! Still, not exactly a bad thing - he still has a bit of weight to lose. And so do I! Kind of wish someone would restrict my diet so I could lose some weight! Or do I.....

So, today we worked more on suppleness and roundness using the bending exercise from yesterday, but we added in an extra degree of difficulty - canter. Manu had us doing an exercise she first introduced me to about a year ago but I went off and had a baby and forgot all about it! Canter, steady, down to trot then immediate indirect turn of 90 degrees. As he starts to round and bring his back up to complete the turn, ask for canter again. And voila! His head stayed down. We'd been losing lots of marks for canter transitions as he'd hollow and stick his head up even though he was being obedient and not truly resisting.

We basically played around with techniques to help him lift his back and a bit more cementing of the 'two taps on the chest' to stop game. It's really fun! Assegai started doing those cool sliding stops like western reining horses. Felt awesome.

So, now a day off all round before we start the clinic with Chris Burton on Saturday. It's forecast to be very tropical (for Canberra) ie hot and wet. I'm really looking forward to it. Now I've set my goal for this horse it seems to be achievable when I break it down into steps. 1* is certainly intimidating when you're still at Intro and haven't competed at any kind of decent level in 10 years, but I'm going to give it a red-hot go, using some non-traditional techniques like barefoot and equitation science. Glad you're along for the ride (no pun intended). :)