Day 4 was another gymnastic day. Finally the weather began to get a little warmer, and the exercises were more technical than the previous day.

I got in trouble with Laurie because I left without putting my horses blanket on…poor guy! My mind was a little scattered from all we had done.

Backing up a little though, we began our session by George letting us work at will. Working at will allowed us to get our horses stretched out and warm before we could start putting them together. It also allowed us to follow up on a couple of George’s exercises by ourselves.

Then we started jumping, and we began jumping the “banquette,” which consisted of a little vertical short four strides to the banquette. Once up on the banquette, there was a rather long three stride, and a short one. We did this exercise multiple times in different directions.

Following this, we rode an S line, which started with a vertical five strides to an oxer, direct in four to a two or three stride to a vertical-vertical liverpool set, four strides on a bend to a four-stride turn left, and repeat the exercise. It was more challenging when the jumps where smaller than when the jumps were bigger, because then it became shorter. Both sessions were very good, and afterwards we returned to the stable, where we finished grooming our horses.

After lunch our next session was with Allyn Mann, who taught joint health and maintenance from Adequan. This was a very important session, because joint health is not something that can be ignored. We learned everything there possibly was to learn on joint health and certain products and medications.

That was the last session for the day! We all fed, did all our chores around the barn and called it a day. I was ready to go back to my hotel and… “zzzzzzzzzz.”

Until tomorrow,
Theo