Since the weather was cooperating so well, I opted to work Gus outside. This of course involved digging out my jacket, one that hasn't been worn since probably late May. I also had to scrounge around to find Gus's Cavallo Simple Boots.
I decided to not lunge Gus this morning prior to riding... which ended up not being such a huge deal. We started off with the usual, but being that we were working in the outdoor standard dressage arena, we worked more on 4 loop serpentines rather then 3 loop. We also did the standard leg yield to SIs, both on the center line and the quarter line. And attempted (haha, if you want to even call it that) working on leg yields, with transitions, on the diagonal. Those didn't go so well - we ended up with a nice giraffe impression, instead of the lovely dressage "frame" that we all so desire. Oh well, we attempted. We ended up our arena work for the day with some canter circles, 20 meters of course. Boy is it hard to transition from a small dressage arena to a large - I have really concentrate on making those circles round, not lopsided.
After working for about 30 minutes in the arena, we went an just trotted and cantered a bit in the grassy jump field. I opted to not work a lot out there because (1) Gus was tired and (2) the ground was still slippery from the morning's dew.
Gus was surprisingly sound with the Cavallo boots on. Only at the very end of our ride were we getting some bad steps. Who knows the reason why... but he was much more comfortable working outside with the boots on. So boots outdoors it is. Easy enough to fix that issue, least for the time being. Tomorrow is lesson day again and on Thursday is the farrier. So we'll see what the farrier finds out on Thursday.
I decided to take some photos after our ride today. So enjoy! I know that Gus was really enjoying his err, treat. Sheesh.
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