No new tale to tell

I haven't posted lately because all I have to say is "Kaswyn feels great! My ride/lesson was fantastic! Things are going well!", which is really quite boring. Not that I'd want to go back to the mystery lameness/attempt to rehabilitate roller coaster that we were stuck on for 18 months. At this point, I'd rather be boring.

We're up to about 35 minutes of work each session and he's been feeling great. He's been completely sound and absolutely even. In addition to leg yields we've added come shoulder-in, haunches-in, and one short line of half-pass. I need to get my trainer to video these movements so I can add them to my video glossary. He's still pretty weak in these movements since we are still building muscle and stamina, but I can feel him getting stronger with each day.

In our last lesson my trainer had me ride a 20 meter circle at one end of the arena. On the "open" end of the circle (the part that was open to the rest of the arena and didn't have a fenceline for us to follow) she had me ask Kaswyn for a few strides of very collected canter. Normally this would be the warm-up for some canter pirouettes, which require a lot of strength behind so they would be out of the question for Kaswyn at this point. However, after two strides of the very collected canter Kaswyn assumed we were doing a pirouette and started to do one. I quickly stopped him and my trainer and I both laughed.

You see, it's rare to find a horse that has such a great work ethic. Instead of asking, demanding, or forcing Kaswyn to do difficult movements, he just offers them. As if to say "I know what you want, and I want to do it for you. Here ya go." Granted, he doesn't always do them correctly, but he offers to do them.

When that happens it's hard not to get excited for the future. Which looks like it might not be boring at all.