Flooding and Tack Fitting!!

The horses continue to impress me with their steady progress in training down here, this past month has really brought about some breakthroughs in training for both Nico and Roz.  Today with Nico we worked lots on the piaffe/passage work, trying to create more cadence in his passage by using frequent variation in the transitions, going from piaffe to a more forward piaffe into a smaller more expressive passage then straight into a medium trot and back to passage, I am pleased with how these little gear shifts are working more and more fluidly with him, we also worked with zig zag leg yields in the canter, this helps first of all to improve the zig zag half passes from the Grand Prix but also just generally it has really helped Nico to become braver about opening his shoulders up more and has gotten him much more into two reins in the canter work.  Roz was a good girl as well, with learning to sit more I find her becoming more confident in her balance as well, she still has a ways to go but I feel it improving regularly, I notice it in her flying changes more and more, especially the right to left one, she's been pretty good about the changes in general but before, she would get a bit away from me, especially in the right to left one, sometimes they felt like she was about ready to achieve lift off, now I feel the aids go through more smoothy and then I can ride sequence changes more and more without feeling like she's losing her balance and running through the changes, she is now able to do a greenish working canter pirouette as well.  In other exciting horsey news, Tango decided to dismantle his auto waterer last night, I must have had a sense as I went to do night check a bit early and as soon as I walked in the barn heard an abnormal sound coming from a waterer and sure enough he was in the process of flooding his stall!  Thankfully he hadn't done it too soon before I arrived as the stall wasn't too wet so I managed to turn it off and prevent Tango from floating away, crisis averted!!;)  Must be the week of flooding as it poured rain all day today and I literally have a pond right outside the trailer door, who knew I would be so lucky as to have lakefront real estate in the RV park!;)

On another note, was just reading the noseband article on Eurodressage and I have to say noseband fitting is one issue that drives me crazy with horses, I come from the good old pony club background of bridle fitting, four fingers under a throatlatch, two fingers under a noseband and the noseband height two fingers below the horse's cheekbone.  These days it seems everything is done to the extreme, either people ride with their nosebands so tight the horse has a permanent indent in their nose or so loose that it can be seen dangling a mile away, I equate noseband fitting to the fitting of a watch, you don't want it so tight that your hand is turning purple and yet you don't want it so loose that it's constantly sliding up and down your arm, the correct tension is enough to keep it quietly in place, I think this is common sense but then common sense with horses isn't always something that we see unfortunately.  In my opinion monitoring of the noseband tightness by stewards is a good thing, though I think a good steward who is well trained should naturally be slipping two fingers under the noseband during a tack check anyhow, if we can train 12 year olds in pony club to do this on a regular basis surely our dressage stewards should be able to do the same?  And on the rider responsibility end of things, riders ought to know the proper way to fit a basic snaffle bridle before climbing in the saddle, I'm pretty sure there are no hockey players out there who don't know how to properly lace up their skates!