Half-Time!!

Another week has gone by already, I can't believe how fast the time is passing, we're already at the halfway mark of our time down here.  I did feel a bit homesick the other day, definitely missing my friends, clients and horses back home, but then I heard there was a big snow storm and that cured my homesickness pretty quickly haha!  This Wednesday we had Juan Matute come out to the barn to work a number of the horses in hand, Juan worked with Nico a bit last winter so it was nice to be able to have another session with him, I was especially pleased that he noticed such a huge difference in Nico from last year, said he wouldn't have even recognized him as being the same horse.  Juan is quite amazing to watch with the in-hand work, his timing and patient persistence with the horses is very admirable, he has some videos on dressageclinic.com which I would highly recommend to anyone interested.  Nico is really quite good with the in-hand work now and actually gets quite hot from it which is definitely good as it allows us to tap more into his hindlegs in the collected work, however this is a bit of a careful balancing act as today I had some moments where he felt fantastic but also a couple moments where I could feel him really getting a bit worried about his newfound engagement as, it's always a fine line to up the bar steadily but to also keep things under control so that the horse can achieve success and then relax into their newfound balance and power as well, oh well no one ever said dressage was easy!;)  Rozzie is also finding new pieces of herself out, she is starting to understand about how her hindleg joints work more and more and she gets moments where she really sits more and starts to push uphill, consequently she is starting to come up more in front and get more shoulder as well, she can't hold it long yet as she's not strong in this balance yet so we tend to get some fishtailing while she tries to figure it out then a few steps of really good and then she usually loses her balance and we resume the cycle, today she was able to hold an extension for a whole diagonal in quite an uphill balance and it felt really amazing!  I'm very impressed with her bravery to try and figure things out, she has her moments where she gets a bit pushy but it always comes from a good place, I feel she gets frustrated sometimes when she can't quite figure something out and I love that she's so interested in her work and wants to do things right so badly even when we do get some uncoordinated extras thrown in;)
On a personal note, those of you who know me well know how much I love music, these days I find Bob Seger's Against the Wind turning up on my ipod regularly, such an amazing song and of all the literature I've read and songs I've listened to over the years this one contains one of the greatest lines of all time in my opinion "wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then", that line is so incredibly deep and can relate to so many times and things in life and I'm sure pretty much every person on this planet could find a personal meaning to that very line, anyways just thought I would share that for anyone who is also a Bob Seger fan out there;)