During Thursday’s lesson with Alex he was at ‘C’ and I was approaching ‘A.’ He called out to me, “When you get to ‘A’ halt, rein back, then piaffe.” I halted at ‘A’ and during the rein back Zelador did some piaffe steps. I could hear Alex chuckling 40 metres away! Good ole, Zelador, he heard Alex say “piaffe” and he heard “rein back,” then he proceeded to put the two together! More than once Alex has commented that he might as well just talk directly to Zelador when he wants me to do something with him. (Cutting out the middleman, so to speak.)
Today with Zelador I actually asked him to try to piaffe backwards and he did! We did it a few times and once I asked Bill to watch and he said it was GREAT! Several times I started at a specific well-marked spot along the arena wall so that I could visually measure how far Zelador piaffed backwards.
Zelador also did the piaffe pirouette to the left and to the right with the hind end staying in one spot and the front end travelling around it. Great fun! We also played around with full-passes at the walk in both directions, turns on the forehand and on the haunches at the walk. Now to find some neat music and video tape all of this.
P. S. It’s April 3rd. The Temperature at 8:00 in the morning is -8. There’s fresh snow on the ground with the forecast of up to five cm. We’re two weeks into “Spring”. I’ve got to find my super-duper winter coat and head to the barn.
