So I am getting to know my first colt after all. Seventeen years have passed since we took my husband's small Holstein-Arab mix mare to the neighborhood stallion of Holstein-Hannovarian descent and one year later received this pitch-black little fellow, who - from day one - appeared to have been there always. He was a good sport, all these years, for an ever changing number of riders. And now he is my school horse in the study-horsemanship from there to here program, preparing horses for a school of modern equitation.
As indicated in the first report it took him a while to catch on to new concepts. Meanwhile I am at odds with the lack of forward locomotion. After all, not only was Pinochio trained exclusively in the forward mode. As his German rider I have forward, pizzaz (Schwung) and working from the core (Losgelassenheit) in my blood. And I am asking myself, how can training in the halt, back-up and walk possibly produce what to German riders is as much as a sacred concept.
Consequently I took Pinochio for another test in the forward mode and, enjoying him, added walk-canter transitions. The next day he was stiff and not at all his cheerful self. It took three attempts to figure out he wanted to be challenged in what he was taught anew. Not in doing laps. Remounting after work in hand and some ground work he offered a pirouette renverse, the very first of Beudant's exercises, which I have greatest doubts about. We added the ordinary pirouette and soon found ourselves in a succession of backing up head high and walking freely reins long. He wanted to be challenged in the new progressions, but how did he so evidently know what they are?
After the ride I took him for a little tour around the house, past his group's field, back to the stable and finally walked him to the field. There he remained midway between the gate, available to his mares or me, depending on how things might develop.
