Hay in Her Pockets

For the last year, I’ve been watching Lindy trot around at liberty and wondering what I have done by bringing home this horse who moves like a sewing machine needle when she gets excited– her legs going up and down faster and faster and faster.

Meanwhile, there would be Sadie, doing a lovely, floaty, balanced and fancy lengthening right next to Lindy.

I’d look at Lindy’s conformation and think that she looked nicely put together.  Put together a lot like Sadie, in fact.  And then I’d wonder why Lindy couldn’t move like Sadie.  Or I’d remind myself how the finer points of conformation analysis is just not my strong suit (while trying to draw hindquarter triangles on Lindy and Sadie, imagining plumb lines dropping through their forearm grooves, checking the slope of their humerus and assessing the height of their stifle bulges).

For that last year I’ve been telling myself that it’s just that Lindy didn’t have the strength or balance to move like Sadie (but then I’d think about how warmbloods are born moving that way, how Sadie came to me moving like that, and I’d wonder if I was kidding myself).

Even when Lindy started being able to balance herself a bit better and slow her rhythm, there still wasn’t a lot of suspension.  But at least it was improvement and I figured if that was the best Lindy could do, that would be OK.  I really got her to be a lesson pony, not my next show pony.

But yesterday, being a crazed loon in the roundpen, suddenly Lindy pulled off a trot lengthening that had some float, some cadence, some fancy-pants-ness.

Hallelujah!