Artic Air and Patty's Arena

Winter is really here and I am already ready for warm spring days and green grass. Splash is making incrementally slow progress but one ride a week is not really adequate for him at this stage. The weather on Sat. was supposed to be relatively nice with front coming late afternoon. The front blew in before 10am and we raced to Patty's to try to beat the real cold and get our party lesson in time. Patty's arena really helped block the wind and only Patty was really cold during the lesson.

Marsha rode Pico, Kathy/Casper, Amanda/Missy, Alison/2-yr old dun palomino, and me/Splash. Pico was a good boy for Marsha and Marsha did a good job with him - got a few nice canter transitions too. Casper settled down for Kathy after Amanda worked him a bit and Alison's new baby was great - even did a little spinning w/ Amanda after the lesson. Splash is still a slug. Spurs and the infamous german neck stretcher help and we had some decent trot work (still need more energy) but our canter transitions are BAD and keeping the canter is hard too. We did some leg yeilds at the walk and trot and Splash is very hard to keep moving forward. A little better was the excercise with "collection" along the short end "extention" along the long side. I might need bigger spurs.

And I sure wish I had a picture of our waitress's face when she heard about the German Neck Stretcher..... She imagined a rather wild scene. Think of what she could imagine with the 2-whip tango and bigger spurs...