Back in the pattern of lateness, it appears. Last week was spent wrestling with a particularly pesky subtitling job and work for the “writing historical novels” class. But I did ride, of course, even though I felt rather miserable before heading off to the stables. Fortunately, I left feeling much better. Unfortunately, I believe it is just a theory lesson this week, so we’ll see how that goes in terms of my mood.

In any case, I was back on Hedvig, and had an interesting ride on her out in the paddock. As she had already shown indoors, she is a bit of a silly girl, and there was plenty to be silly about outdoors. In fact, I didn’t really get a lot of good work out of her as she was a bit too high-strung to really settle down. However, I enjoyed not being nervous on a flighty horse even when out in the paddock. It also seems as if she’s getting fitter by the day, so that’s good news, and she has definitely shed some weight since she first came to the stables.

We worked with transitions, first between walk and trot and then a bit between walk and canter, and I did get to feel that she has quite some power in her hind quarters when they are properly engaged. I probably only got a few strides of it at walk and trot, but I could feel it very distinctly.

As for the cantering, I did get to try out some of that too. She finds it pretty hard to actually pick up the canter, and at first I was being too lenient on her. But once reminded to be a little firmer, she managed pretty well (though she does have to run into it a bit), and she’s certainly very enthusiastic once cantering. She can’t be collected at all yet, the strength isn’t there, but I could tell she has much more potential for a good canter than for example Murphy. It is not at all as flat and ground-tied.