11th September, 2008 Occipital - that's easy for you to say!

In the end, there were four of us at Amanda Barton's clinic that I'd arranged for today. Petra had two lessons - one with Julie on board who worked on breathing (like bellows!) and foot fall. I worked on breathing too and relaxing my occipital bone as well as Petra's when working in trot. This is the bone at the base of the skull and the most critical one for allowing a horse to soften. If I softened, Petra softened. It was great fun. Fantastic also to be at a lesson where there is absolutely no bitchiness and the instructor doesn't sound like a fishwife or tell you to shorten your reins and hit your horse.

There's two pages of me in Your Horse this month and a great article by Kelly with loads of pictures of Caesar. My loading article has also appeared in this quarter's Listening Post.