Sound on the 20m circle

This was one of those lovely surprises you sometimes get along the 'road to barefooted soundness'. When I'd first got Lutine, someone had advised me to have some standardised 'tests' that I could use to chart her progress. One of the tests I had was Lutine trotting a 20m circle in our sand-based round pen. In the early months of January, February and March, she was definitely head-bobbing lame on the 20m circle. I'd stopped doing this test because, for a start, the circle puts extra strain on the joints and I was trying to get rid of inflammation, and because it used to depress me watching her head bob!

One breezy evening in July, I'd put her in the round pen to eat her food and she decided she was fed up of being in there, plus she was feeling scatty owing to the breezy conditions. When I looked over to see if she'd eaten up her dinner, she was prancing around the round pen looking very sound. I went and got my lunge whip so I could direct this movement a little more effectively and asked my husband to take some video tape.

Well, being 'lunged' in the round pen was very exciting for Lutine! She was bowling along at the trot and breaking into canter, on both reins. No sign of the head bobbing! And, to top it off, she insisted on jumping over a small group of poles laid on the floor every time she went round, even though stepping over them was perfectly feasible.

Sound on the 20m circle and happy to take canter on both reins! Yeehah!

I do have video footage and one day, when I work out how to edit it and upload it to the Net, I will put it up on the blog for people to look at.