For those you of you have decent facilities, you have no issues but the place for lessons/jumping at the yard I'm at is only a fenced part of a field..therefore it gets shocking slippery or in the summer it becomes like concrete. If you actually want to do work in there, there are only a few weeks out of the year when the ground is comfortable. Also our sandschool is so deep it isn't usable really. 

Of course everywhere else has dried up as well, it's like being on a road all the time and obviously I wouldn't intentionally canter on a road so.. Some of my friends horses/ponies would happily canter on anything if asked too, but Parsley, whether this genuinely be because of his feet and what they have been through, is very careful.

The other week a friend and I went on one of our most loved longer rides and did our usual canter, (we're out for 2 hours and there is only one or two spaces to canter lol!) which he usually bombs - he loves it cos it's flat..but my friends horse went off at usual lightning speed but Parsley just cantered just about fast enough to keep up but you could tell he wasn't happy..just didn't want to be left behind. So it just shows about hard ground. Although this weather is wonderful, when we don't have rain and without the use of an indoor school..you can become very limited!