Happy Fourth to everyone! Bandit, Jake, and I are all upstairs in the bedroom watching the fireworks outside the window-no bugs and a great view of everything in the neighborhood 
The local fireworks show never disappoints and I have a spectacular view from my window-really, I can see it all. The extra plus to this is that since Bandit is a little freaked, I can stay upstairs with him and still see everything!
Bandit is doing great, Jake is doing ok (he sprained his tail again today, wagging a little too much I guess), and Daisy is doing pretty well, too. We’ve been working on my balance more than anything else lately. Pilates is really helping to pay off. I had one of those huge realizations when things just click and we took a huge step forward in training. I still want to start taking lessons from a good trainer, but I’m going to hold off just a LITTLE longer to get my balance just a little better. In addition to Pilates, I’ve been reading this book called “Balance in Movement” and it makes a lot of sense! I’m excited to be reading and learning at the same time. We’ll probably do some more training tomorrow because we took the day off today-I figured with the holiday, Daisy deserved a little time off too. We went out to the pasture, she got turned out, and I read a book for about 2 1/2 hours today. It was wonderful. I really needed to mental break with all the stress at work right now. Anyway, I’m rambling-back to the training. I’ve found that if I keep my hip flexors elongated in the saddle, it puts my body in the right position. I balance with the trunk of my body and I don’t need my arms or legs for balance anymore (ok a little, but the main part is in the pelvis and abs). We cantered a 10 meter circle like that (not an easy thing for an unbalanced horse), and Daisy was able to keep herself slow and balanced-no leaning to the inside and speeding up to compensate for me throwing her off balance. We did this her good way and we didn’t attempt the bad way yet. I figured that she did so well that I wanted to end it there. Since we didn’t canter too much and we worked both ways at the trot, I wasn’t too concerned about her being worked too hard one way and not at all the other. We’ll see how it goes next time.
