11.15am
Alison got everyone to play the games using the lightest feel and doing your highest. Confused. this meant using a very light feel and using the lightest of phases and seeing what you could receive from your horse. This could be anything from increasing the distance or upping the tasks such as going from simple "Circling to playing "Change of Direction" During this time Mick was having a couple of difficulties with sending Murphy over a jump so AJ coached him through this. AJ increased the level by having people backing their horse up using more energy and with better use of the CS. Being effective instead of nagging. The look on the horses faces was fascinating as the horses realised there was going to be no messing today.

12.30pm
AJ then give a demo of "Transitions on the Circle" Where to place the CS, use of the 12ft and 22ft line. When playing the circling game, the horse should do 2-4 laps on the 12ft line and 6-8 on the 22ft line. This is unbroken laps. If the horse stops then you start counting from 1 again." What do you do if the horse just disengages all the time?" RE-SEND.. Alison points out that the laps also need to be calm and relaxed. After the demo and all questions are asked and answered everyone goes off to practice. Lunch seems a long way off and it was a welcome sight when it came. Hungry faces soon got together and what did we do. Chat about horses of course.

2.30pm
When is the time right to move from the 12ft line to the 22ft line? Now this is a good question, various answers came forward which Alison said were good but not what she was looking for. You could near on see the commotion in every ones head as they tried to think but no one got it. What was it... The answer will be revealed on the .... nah only kidding. "When the 12ft line feels too short". simple eh! So the afternoon was spent playing circling and disengaging and playing friendly from different zones, Squeeze over a pole and getting a good send. Whey Hey! Not so easy when you ask rather than tell.. Over a small jump of only 1ft Bruno (all 17.2hh of him) was having none of it. What a baby, Hoppy being a big softie makes excuses for him saying he has arthritis but hang a mo, isn't that Hoppy a few minutes later sending Bruno over a 2ft jump with him flying over quite enthusiastically? Catherine shows her shy side and tries to hide and discretely send Capella effortlessly over a pole though the disengaging needs working on. Murphy, well what a lot of horse Murphy is with attitude. If he doesn't want to do anything he just takes off. Murphy was saying "No! I don't do jumps, no matter how low they are" Alison takes the line and Murphy gives as good as he gets but Alison being a good leader soon shows how to send a RB horse LB and by doing plenty of approach and retreat with friendly she soon has Murphy jumping both ways. This is not to say Murphy was putty in her hands because he wasn't. He braced, pulled and tried to turn many times but Alison stayed with him all the time. We were running over time and I unfortunately had to leave. Oh well! Now to re-cap on the Sunday.

SATURDAY
I missed the first couple of hours of the morning but I hear that Alison had three playing the carousel. Now that would have been great to watch ,, darn that I missed it. I arrive at the venue at 11.30am in time to see a game being set up. "Quick Draw" The idea is to place your CS on the ground with the handle at the cone. You hold the end of your SS and on a count of three you flick the CS into the air and catch it by the handle. You then swing the CS to hit the cone in the middle. After a bit practice Alison then set it into a fun competition. Set in pairs it was the best of five attempts and the one with the highest score won. The winners played each other until it was Evelyn and Hoppy in the final. It was a close call and Hoppy won only then to find that she now had to play Alison.