London's BACK!

Ahm... I'm a touch excited.

My big boy London arrived last night around 8 pm to join in my 'lesson string' which had previously consisted of only RC.

London, back in the day

For those of you who are new to the blog, London is my first schoolmaster. We earned my bronze medal, and tried my first timid foray into fourth level (not good). We learned our first tempi changes together and showed all over the country, trying to qualify for various championship. That horse has earned my a ton of reserve champion ribbons.

Rockin' the top hat before it was banned

Of course that has been over the last ten years. He's now 19 and has spent the last two years teaching my mom how to do dressage after emphaticly declaring that he had had it with fourth level collection/work. He's happy puttering around in a first level frame, and only occasionally playing with the lateral and collected movements. He is, however, a spectacular lunge lesson horse (I know, I took three days of lunge lessons with Martha on him). So, he's earned his golden retirement of carting kids around, letting them learn how to do round circles and get baby lengthenings... not to mention getting fussed over and pampered by a couple 13 year old girls is right up his alley.

Of course, I took him out for a little bit of light work and a trail ride with my mom on RC for compnay. This horse is 19, he'll be fine, I thought.
I was wrong. Kind of.

He was hot. Passage-through-all-of-the-trot-work and porpoise-into-the-canter-work kind of hot... Which is to say, that he was a blast to ride today. There was more forward energy from that horse than I have ridden in the last 5 years...
Could have been the three days spent on a trailer...
Or being reunited with his Bestie, RC.
Or meeting the pony girls.
Or the 50 degree temperature drop from the beginning of his trip.

But seriously, who wouldn't want to learn on this: