Too Hard to Canter

The choice today was a lesson with Poppy or a hack in the woods, so I went with the woods option and was given Ben to ride. I'm starting to think I might have misjudged cobs all these years, because Ben breaks the mold too, being the most forward-going horse I've ridden in quite a while. He's light on his feet, too, which is unusual for a horse with such a stocky build. He wouldn't stand still while I was trying to tighten my girth and adjust my stirrups, and he was on the brink of an upwards transition the whole way round the woods, wanting to trot when we were walking and canter when we were trotting. Unfortunately, the ground was too hard to canter, so I didn't get to find out if Ben's canter is sedate and measured like Toby's, or if he really was a racehorse in a former life and would have gone off like a rocket. I suspect the latter.