I warmed up while Kim was giving a lesson and the little girl was practicing barrels, Sophie didn't care. Kim's daughter was riding her young barrel horse, often cantering around the ring, Sophie didn't care. She didn't care about the clucking, she didn't care too much when the first horse left and she cared even less when the second horse left.
She was on the bit, round, soft, and wasn't tossing her head at all. We warmed up with 20 meter circles all over the ring, then went to leg yielding on the long sides, starting at less than the quarter line and moving further out from there. She was great, especially when I remembered to use my outside aids when turning for the quarterline.
She did really good leg yielding to the right and then we changed across the diagonal and cantered a 20 meter circle to the right, working on the upward and downward transitions as well as maintaining jump in the canter, keeping her round, and not asking for a bigger canter with my seat at the same time.
We had a break then and worked on leg yielding to the left, which didn't go so well, she wasn't nearly as responsive to my right leg though, and was very forward today, so I had some trouble with the leg yield to the left until I started utilizing the right rein, and then they got better. After that we reversed at the trot and I had my best change of whip ever. She stayed round and forward the entire time I switched it, then I fell forward after that and she walked, but it was a good sign. Then we cantered to the left and worked on transitions for a bit.
We ended the ride with sidepassing around the corners to work on her moving off my leg. We quickly learned that she gets a little anxious, so we can't do two corners in a row, instead we have to do a corner and then a lap, then do a corner again. After we did the exercise a few times she was much quieter though, and started to stay soft and round while leg yielding and we were able to use just a long side in between. We only did corners 6 or so times and she got much better about it, she also was trying to stop at the original corner when we passed it after just three times.
I couldn't believe how wonderful she was today though. There was one point during our warm up where I whacked her beind my leg with the whip because she was losing momentum, and after riding without a whip yesterday my legs were already tired and sore. After that, she was full steam ahead with no encouragement from me! But it also meant that when I tried to emphasize my right leg moving her left she sped up rather than sideways. So I plan to work more on the sidepassing to work on her sensitivity and my transitions.
Oh, and when the saddle fitter was here, looking at my saddle, she said "wow, you've really been taking good care of this", I thought it was funny, lol. I made sure to clean it tonight because I had to run yesterday after the saddle fitting was done and didn't have time to do anything but put Sophie away and get home to change for class. So, today was great, and I forgot that Sophie's been on Raspberry Leaves for just over a week, so who knows if they are a big contributing factor to her new attitude under saddle, but I'm not complaining!
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