In-hand in the Cold

In-hand in the cold, originally uploaded by eudiaptumus.

The ground is frozen solid, and unfortunately there's quite a bit of ice in the arena, so it's not good for longing or riding right now.

I got the book "Twisted Truths of Modern Dressage" by Philippe Karl and the DVD "Classical versus Classique" with Philippe Karl and Christoph Hess for Christmas, and have re-watched my PK DVD's (again). I've begun working with PK's bit flexions in-hand in halt and walk while the arena is no-go, as it doesn't take much space, and I can do it even in the pasture or the stable ;)

I've done a bit of this work before, but this past year has been very confused trainingwise with my injury and Barokko's illness, and we haven't really gotten into a rhythm of doing it regularly. I've done a lot of cavesson training with Branderup inspired trainer, but I've forgotten the bit work. But now is as good a time as any to get back to it :)

While Barokko works really well on the cavesson, he has a tendency to hang heavily on the bit, so my focus is to get him to relax his mouth, and lift his head instead of bearing down on my hand. You can actually see in the picture that he's on the way to pulling down on the bit when I was trying to bend his neck away from me.

This evening I trained with him in the stable aisle, the third day in a row of these exercises. He was much more relaxed today than the previous days, playing with the bit, and bending his neck more freely (because of the relaxation). He seemed very comfortable with the bit, and even after we had finished continued to play softly with it while I cleaned his hooves and got him ready for bed.