Scorchio!

What a lovely afternoon. The sun is blazing down and the temperature has rocketed up. I haven't quite summoned up enough courage to turn the pair out without rugs on. Clearly they'd love it, but I am not quite up to the clean-up job that will be required tomorrow if I do :-0

This morning there was a mist so heavy that it wasn't safe to ride out on the roads, which was a shame because that's what I'd planned to do with them both. But we went indoors instead. Tetley was great. Sound. Happy. Ending up doing trot half pass in an area only 12 yards wide. I stopped after 25 minutes and took him out for a blast up the field across the road. It's too wet to school on yet (going round and round in the same area marks the ground badly and it's not my land so I don't like to push my luck), but about OK for a run.

Tia - tee hee. She continues to behave like a car towing a trailer. The trailer jackknifes sideways so that the car doesn't have to get out of the way. Holding her straight can produce some lovely hoppy dances around the school! Then we played the "well do you want trot or don't you?" game. Where I say "trot" and she belts off nineteen to the dozen, and I say "don't, not like that" and then she sulks and won't trot at all, and then I boot her in the ribs, and off she runs again. Finally she realised that it would be an awful lot easier to keep herself in balance and take a reasonable trot transition than it was to keep chucking her head in the air and running flat out into a wall. She did some really nice stuff after not too long, and then I stopped on a good note. She was perfectly sound, with no boots on either. I knew if I paid over £100 for the darned things I wouldn't need them!

It's a great day and I have two lovely horses and a big smile on my face.

C.

ps for those considering a WOW, you might need to know that they are probably as heavy as any saddle on the market. They have to be to get a rigid structure strong enough for all the bits to be bolted to. But a heavy rider on a smaller horse might think that the weight was too much. Also that it takes at least a week to get used to the riding position. There is an exceptionally high and narrow twist, which lets you drop your thigh straight down the saddle and sit superbly. But if you change back to an ordinary one once you are used to it, it feels dreadfully wide at the hips.

pps Tetley's leg was less warm this morning than it has ever been. I know that he has had two days off, but I've done that before. Also, "two days off" is spent in the field walking up and down a 1 in 5 (20% for you foreigners and youngsters) slope, so hardly a rest!! There is definitely something going on. The lumps are bigger, smoother, and there is less heat. We have moved on a stage I think. I wonder what comes next?

ppps Anyone know anything about ringbone? There is a big, well-bred, young horse on projecthorses with it which is probably going pretty cheap.