Pirouettes! Biasini the Ballet Dancer!

The featured image in this blog post was taken last winter by Susan Stickle. The great thing about good equine photographers is they manage to capture the best moments.  So it looks like all our pirouettes were excellent. Truth be told I did not always ride them so well: not a good preparation, or not enough energy in the pirouette or too much energy etc etc.

As you know I have been working on the canter while my coach Belinda Trussell was competing in Rio. We got an A on our report card for that homework and now Belinda wants to progress on and put that canter to work in some of the movements.

We started the lesson with about 10 minutes of no stirrups canter work. I volunteered for the no stirrups as I felt certain Biasini was in a focused mood today and there was little likelihood of spooks. After that 10 minutes was over Belinda said she wanted to work on the pirouettes.

Starting with a ‘bounce’ on a 20 m circle. This is about 5 strides of very collected canter over the centerline. Then Belinda instructed me that what she wanted next was a big working pirouette and on her command to make it smaller, then bigger again and then smaller and so on. We did that on both reins. Then Belinda said she would ask me to not only go smaller or bigger but also to vary between slower and quicker.  I smiled and nodded and in my head I thought:” Oh boy….this is going to be tough to do.”

So out we went into the working pirouette. “Smaller”  ” Now bigger” “Smaller again.” “Quicker” “Slower” “Quicker” And all the while also going smaller or bigger. We would only do two to three strides before Belinda would ask for a change of size or speed.

And Biasini responded with lightening speed to every request I made of him.

I MUST HAVE BEEN RIDING AROUND WITH MY MOUTH OPEN IN AMAZEMENT.

When Belinda said :” And out!” to signal me to allow him to leave the pirouette circle Biasini literally sprang forward!  I laughed out loud and so did Belinda.  He was just working so hard to do exactly what was asked of him.

What a fabulous horse! How lucky am I to have a horse like this? I’m on Cloud Nine tonight!