I must admit that I am no great fan of the Dutch gag bit, especially when it is used with a single jointed mouthpiece. The mouthpiece tells the horse to lift up his head and the curb tells him to put it back down. Nevertheless I could see that this set up had taught Chancer not to lean on the bit and trundle around on his forehand. We'll be working our way through the bit collection to find something that does the same job but without the potential confusion.
Horses at Hartsop have to be trailered out to quiet roads for hacking. This means the horse is followed everywhere by the truck and trailer, something else that is pretty good for their education.
Even quiet roads have their fair share of hazards but Chancer wasn't fazed by any of them.
Nicky riding Chancer in the school. We'll be shortening those stirrups.
Next it was time for team Jazz to meet up at the fields. Jazz was backed for the first time and seemed pretty calm about the whole idea.
A little lean, followed by a little lick...
Charly on board bareback and moving in small circles. Later we introduced a saddle and Charly finished with another lean over.
And finally Team Isaac finished with his introduction to long reining. Between step one, walking around with the surcingle on, and step six, long reining solo, there's a number of exercises we do to assess his likely reaction to the reins. We want to avoid him taking off with the long reins. Step five is to use a dual control (Julie!) to show him what we would like him to do.
