4-5 years

We're working on our next goals as Sky turned 4. I'm still mindful of the fact that her spine has not finished fusing yet, so the ridden work is short and low intensity. She's built up a lot of muscular strength from close to 100 miles of in hand and short ridden work in the last year, and this was done over some hilly terrain so she feels really pretty balanced under saddle.

We hack out once or twice a week for about 45 -90 minutes, mostly in walk with a few trots to work on transitions and lightness in the feel here. I'm hoping to do a little more solo ridden work with her, but I admit, I prefer having company, so there's more miles with a friend or two at the moment. We're building up to solo ridden or combo in-hand and ridden hacks though- part of the plan for the next 6 months. I ride in the arena 1-2 x a week to do short sessions on the latest areas of progression. 

At the moment we are working on getting light transitions up and down from trot,  which initially was very sticky, but now post - camp (see Foundational Ridden Work) we have flow and lightness! It's amazing! She now understands forwards on a really light cue. So we are combining transition work with stopping and backing up lightly (she finds this fun I think), steering off the legs, a litte leg yielding, and adding in the hindquarters yields and shoulder yields. We are prepararing for a cow confidence and horsemanship clinic in August so I'd like her to be able to trot to halt and turn back to follow a cow. I think she's going to love it as she herds chickens, the yard cat and any sheep we see.

I'm hoping to get her out and about a little as she is very hefted to the farm mentally, and seems to have thresholds where she finds it hard to leave a certain perimeter from home. Once she is through that with a little encouragement or a lead off another horse, she is fine again, but I want her to feel confident leaving and being away from home, so short trips out locally are on our 'to do' list which will also build her experience in travelling (see Training for travel).