Eole - february 12, 2009

Cold day (0°C). Large covered arena. Coquin, his owner, Eole and I with JC, our usual Thursday morning coach . Eole was quite warm and fit, which was at variance with me: I felt stiff and aching, probably from a cold (I deliberately rule out age by matter of principle!). I could verify that with a bright and sharp horse like Eole, such state of health is not appropriate, because your own body cannot adjust quickly and lightly enough to the horse's movements. The session was somewhat spoiled by that. His walk was quite good and energetic, with lovely descente d' encolure. At trot, I had difficulty to keep him on the hand and slowing down his cadence. Shoulder-ins were acceptable, but I did not get this wonderful yielding on the inside hand that he is able to give when ridden properly. At canter, he tended to rush and it took me some time to reduce his strides which I finally succeeded to get on 6m circles. We did a new exercise which is pretty demanding. Cantering say on left lead, start fome the beginning of the long diagonal and in X do a full volte and a half to the right (hence at counter canter) and continue on the large side at the end, at counter canter. I did not succeed to keep him at canter all the way, and he fell into trot after the first half volte. Clearly, my seat and leg aids were not accurate enough. Hopefully, we were successful on the other hand.
After the session, I did a small work in hand session, which I enjoyed very much. I started teaching 'jambette', following the training pattern proposed by MH in her excellent blog the link of which can be found in my preferred blogs under the title 'Ecuyère Professeur' - quite promising.
We went back to stables, he dry and me rather sweaty. I took a hot coffee at the bar hoping to nip my cold in the bud!