Wow, as always, so much going on. Yes, jingles and healing to all dealing with, well, everything. Gosh, exvet, are you feeling better? And healing to all the horses too.
We are coming out of our own season of winter, Mikey is finally on the up and up and we are cantering a few minutes each ride. Dealing with tension and bitting and my reactions, I cannot transmit any stress to him at all or head tossing and mouth opens etc. We've had a few unexpected, very exciting diagonals
![Shocked :shock:](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
so I can get tense. He is developing nicely muscularly with all our rehab and is offering very nice trot, passagey so I need my instructor to help with that. I haven't been here before, so I don't know if it's too much or something to be encouraged. And I have to be able to keep my position and the correct contact, which i am letting go at this point with all his fussing. I think I need to keep my contact, keep my biceps and forearm relaxed and elbows at my hips and let him figure it out. And not break at my wrists. All while keeping my knees down and relaxed and my midsection back, yada yada. I have video from a saddle fitting last Friday but not sure if I want to post it as we were focused on one or two things and he was having fun with his trot. My position and contact were not helping him and to be honest I was pretty floored with his movement. I have been feeling this coming on 30 m circles when shortening and opening his trot. Add in a saddle I was showing her (not mine) that was too small but I might want to look into after he muscles up, and it wasn't the prettiest. He did make me laugh though, this winter has been a thing and what a gift he gave me when I expected my saddle fitter to see a huge regression in our training. So all said and done, goals:
Figure out the head/mouth thing (new bit? dentist being called this week)
Work on my position so I can help him
Get more videos (a friend has a pivo i can use) to help me work on my position
Figure out if I can keep riding the schoolmaster a few days a week to help with all of this
Strengthening work for me off the horse