Amazingness, And A Dressage Appaloosa...

Today's ride can be summed up with one word...*amazing*. I skipped a chapter in the Lessons With Lendon book (the one on hands, since I try to focus on those every ride) and skipped to the one about leg yielding. Today's ride was spent working on leg yielding in and out on a circle (while staying bent on the circle). We started out doing it at the walk and Sophie did great. It's almost like half passing when spiraling in and of course, we leg yield to spiral back out. Sophie leg yields beautifully, and the spiral circles at the walk were a piece of cake.

So we tried it at the trot after doing them in both directions at the walk. The trot was a lot harder because I had to worry about posting, maintaining rhythm and tempo, bend, and then ask her to spiral in and out at the same time while staying soft and giving with my hands. She was very soft and round throughout most of the circles, and when she would tense and brace I would push her into the outside rein with my inside leg and gently tense and relax my inside ring finger, worked like a charm, she would soften pretty quickly, considering. I did find that the key to that is my leg, without using my leg it wouldn't do anything.

She was going so lovely that after we reversed and did our spiral circles to the right I tried feeding out the reins and she followed the bit down into a nice stretchy circle. I didn't have to wiggle anything or convince her to stretch, she just did it, as long as I kept my inside leg on her at least. Then I decided she was going so well, I brought her back to me and asked her for a canter. She was wonderful, picked it up not on my squeeze but after I kissed at her. We tried two more times and each departure was better than the last.

However, I fell into the trap of being a passenger again, I kept her going at the canter, helped her to keep from falling to the inside by using my inside leg to support her and providing a supportive outside rein, but when we got back to the trot I started out so relieved just to have had a nice canter that she was racing and tense and I just let her be that way. After the second trot-canter transition I really paid attention and half halted to bring her back to a more regular and right for her tempo and she really listened. Then it was much easier to do after the last trot-canter transition in that direction. I also realized that I was pinching with my knees during the downward transition and focused on not doing that for the final transition.

Then I gave her a walk break and reversed to stretchy trot to the left and canter to the left too. Our stretchy circle came almost as easy as the right did. I played with stretchy trot, working trot, stretchy trot transitions. When she was going really nicely I slid my right leg back and prepared to ask fr the canter and she picked the canter up immediately. I think it was due to the fact that with the right going so well I was much more relaxed. Her canter-trot transitions were amazing, she went straight from canter to working trot, no rushing or tenseness. But she was rushing the canter a little. We'll work on that more later, I was mainly focusing on the transitions this time.

I haven't read ahead to see what chapter we'll be doing tomorrow, but we may do some more canter work, even if it's just working on transitions and helping her to be more balanced. Spiral circles may help as well. One thing I've noticed is that Sophie tends to carry her haunches a little to the inside when tracking right. I'm not sure if it's me, or if she's extra sensitive because we've been playing around with moving her side to side with my legs.

Oh, and the ride lasted right around 20 minutes, maybe a touch over. We could have gone longer, but she was so, so, so, so, so good I wanted to reward her by not doing too much. The temptation is there to do more, but I'm a little sore from our short sessions and know that my riding will be helped by not being *really* sore and it'll be easier for Sophie to realize that I'm pleased with what she did. Lendon Gray mentioned in her book that often she has ridden a horse a few minutes and then dismounted, because the horse had done everything well. So I figured it was a good thing. Of course, stopping at 20 minutes means that we aren't ready for a lesson yet, but I feel like we're getting a lot of progress made on our own, and Kim hasn't been around when I've been riding anyway. I also don't want the shock of a lesson to be too much for Sophie, going 45-60 minutes straight and being asked to do more than what I ask on my own.

Because Sophie was so good for our ride I hosed her off after untacking her and handgrazed her while she dried. She loved it. And she loved all of the treats she got while I was cleaning my tack post-drying!

And finally, some pictures, since it's been a couple of entries ago that I posted pictures. No kitty walking pictures though, they haven't been downloaded yet, but instead, a neat Appaloosa that was at Champagne Run Horse Trials a couple of weekends ago. He's a neat color and put in a lovely test. Enjoy!