Aww - Felix is a Schoolie...

Or at least he gets to play one every now and again!

Today Felix gave a little walk/trot lesson to my friend Heather's kid, Sarah.  Sarah has ridden on and off since she was a little little girl, and being as her parents are pretty sick right now and she wanted to go riding I figured it was time Felix got tested out with a kid (ok, tween I guess!).

All in all, I'm pretty impressed.  He put up with a bit of floppyness on the part of his rider, but he's difficult enough that she can learn things in a nice, safe way.

Here's some pics of him with his little rider, now that I have permission to post:

Fun with bits

Since it's been cold and miserable here the last few weeks we've been doing ringwork and getting caught up on other little projects.  Last week Felix had his teeth floated for the first time, which went well.  He was not too bad, but had some points in there that needed it.

We also had the saddle fitter out a few weeks ago.  Laura did a fantasic job on his adjustment, and I am very happy with the current fit.  Still waiting for his crupper to arrive in the mail, but otherwise the adjustments she made are working out fantastically. If you've never had your saddle professionally fitted before I highly recomend it. The things that can look perfect to an untrained eye can still need a bit of tweaking. I also found out that my Isabell was not a good fit for him at all, so it's been sold and we have a brand new St. Lourdes on order.

Yesterday he got a short ride day being as we're all stuffed into a small indoor arena, but we played with bits for a while.  He had been going in a fat copper snaffle, but as we ask him for more work with contact he's gotten progressively more unhappy, with a lot of head tossing. The float was the first step, but this did not 100% handle the problem, so we tried a couple more bits yesterday. The two he seemed to like that need more testing were a big fat stainless steel french link, and my narrow KK Ultra, so we will be keeping track of how he goes in these.

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend!

Hi all,

Thanksgiving weekend up here in Canada - and Felix is going great!  He spent last weekend and the early part of last week going on long trail rides.  We went out to the Pinto club ride last Sunday with Heather - it was his first time in a large group, and his first time out in his new hackamore - but he was still pretty good.  The place where the ride took place was about a 1 1/2 hr drive from the barn, and their trals were much more narrow, rocky, and hilly then he was used to but he handled it rather well. We were in a group of around 20 riders, which had him wound up for the beginning but calmed down by the end of the ride.  It was also windy out and super cold which he'd not experienced before - so all in all it was good.

On wednesday we did Copeland Forest again, as usual he was a star and he's getting very used to going in the hackamore on the trails.  We were out for about 3 hours - and it was a gorgeous ride with the beginings of fall colours.  Here is some pics from the ride :)