I CAN HAS CANTER!?

WE DID IT. WE CANTERED!

My original plan was to give it one more week of trotting for 20 minutes before starting our 5 minutes of canterwork next Thursday, but realistically I realized that there was no way we were going to be able to maintain a full five minutes of canter at this point. Just like when we started our trotwork, I began a few days early just to test out how she felt, just a time or two around the ring. So today, when everything felt right under saddle, I gave it a try. She had spent the morning doing little mini-aerials in her paddock (much to my dismay), so I expected her to be hot and spooky under saddle. She must have gotten her little itch out though in turnout, because she was quite quiet under saddle.

She felt weak. Like she wanted to buck and play and throw her head around and be silly but she didn't have the strength to. She was bopping up and down on both ends so it was a little bit of an ugly ride on my part, but Rome was not built in a day... everybody's gotta start somewhere!




And of course, when I say quiet under saddle, I mean not completely. There was a ray of sunlight that came in the door at the scary end of the arena that was VERY scary, so she of course had to terrify one of our other boarders by trotting past her, seeing the ray of light in front of her that then fell ON her while she was passing it, assuming that the ray of light was EVIL and made of poison, and doing an amazingly athletic courbette that looked exactly like this but even bigger. Well, god forbid the killer ray of sunlight get us, right..?




It's a loooooooooooooooong road ahead until we're back to this again....



................. but we're on our way. And no more incidents like the one in the video on course. Ever. Again.