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Life is good. I'm going to Portugal in September- finally, for some lessons- well, 11 of them! With Morgado Lusitanos, or at Quinta do Archino with Francisco de Bragança, all very exciting stuff!!!
Finally, a chance and oppurtunity to ride some beautiful Lusitano horses, and have some good training. I really want to begin to crank up the pace with Shadow now, and increase his workload and training, but it's such a pain because he's so far away. But I am not going to give up, nor be beaten, I just need to find a way.


In my Phillipe Karl book, 'Twisted Truths of Modern Dressage', I was reading about the Learning Sequences, and I am going to apply this to Shadow; 
Language of Aids;
Objective;
Prepare;
Assess;
Reward;
Repeat;
Perfect. 
At the moment, Shadow's problem is that he isn't very keen on walking forward with a rider on him without someone next to him. I don't equally want a horse which is dead to the leg and needs constant kicking when I can eventually be able to lightly ride him with a wee nudge if that, and a little tap of the crop if need be. So I need to plan a way to vary and make things 'exciting' for him, make a reason for walking forward, lol, I'm considering dangling a carrot on a rope in front of him haha! But what can I make interesting out of walking forward? So need to rack my little brain a tad!!! 
Small steps make big steps...