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Today Lady and I had another nice ride. She is much more up and forward than when we started just a few rides ago. As soon as I pick up contact and pulse my inside leg she flexes at the poll and softens. I'm a little worried that she's flexing too much and can't wait to get another video to see what's happening. For now I'll just work on keeping her forward and in front of the vertical. I think right now she's just trying to find her balance and where feels "right" to carry her head. I just need to help her there, which is kind of hard since I'm not particularly worried about her head and where it is, but I don't want her developing a habit of going BTV.
She was much straighter going to the right this time, instead of doing a renvers the whole time of her own accord she was basically straight. I was even able to leg yield her to the left toward the side of the arena she doesn't care for. She was able to bend better on circles as well. Not only that, but we were able to leg yield from the quarter line to the wall going in both directions fairly easily.
We worked on transitions and due to her dropping her head I lost my focus and didn't go with the plan of transitions every 6 strides. I'll stick to the plan tomorrow though, and see if the head issue resolves itself as she gets used to being forward and ridden from inside leg to outside rein.
I think the best part of the ride was the end. I was letting her walk on a loose rein and thought to myself, why not try a little baby shoulder in, just to see what she did, because she was doing so well with leg yielding today. So we went to the left first, did a small circle and I kept my positioning for the shoulder in, and like magic, she glided into a smooth shoulder in! She did great compared to last time we tried. We did it a couple more times and then switched directions. She struggled a lot going to the right, but actually did pretty well consdering just our last ride we were needing to travers and leg yield in order to not bend to the outside!
I wanted to write down what we did on our last ride. It was very, very windy and I almost didn't ride, even after spending a while getting Lady cleaned up, but I decided to try it despite the cold and the wind...and I was glad I did! First of all, Lady has the perfect temperment for a windy day, nothing phases her and she didn't care about *anything*. I think the wind bothered me more than it bothered her.
We started out by walking a few laps around the ring to let her warm up and get synovial fluid flowing in her joints. After the walking we began trotting on a long rein, letting her get even looser and ready to work. She was doing great, foward and energetic and picking up the trot very quickly when I asked. At this point I mostly focused on myself, sitting straight and tall, staying relaxed and not tensing or gripping with anything and most importantly, looking *up*.
After I was satisfied with myself and that Lady was warmed up we started working on the meat of the ride...transitions. My goal was just to do lots of walk-trot transitions (it was a little slick to be cantering). I wanted to get her forward and thinking forward, ready to flow into the trot from the walk and back into a forward walk from the trot. At the same time I stayed super focused on my position and staying relaxed and not blocking her (or nagging her). I wasn't worrying about her frame or how round she was, just maintaining a nice connection and doing our transitions.
In the beginning I did two transitions on each long side of the arena, and the change in Lady was amazing...she took notice, started marching in her walk and smoothly going into the trot when I asked. Her head also came up a bit but she flexed at the poll, without me doing anything to encourage it other than supporting her through the transitions and keeping her forward. We started adding in some large circles and doing transitions on the circles as well.
I always start our rides to the left, because it's my better direction, and it's Lady's better direction. To the right she tends to bend to the outside, from head to tail. I've been working on developing more straightness in this direction and during our last ride discovered that if I ask her for travers to get the correct bend (at least a bend to the inside of the ring instead of the outside) and then leg yield her back over to the wall whe would move straight. We did that a few times and when we circled after doing this exercise she gave me an amazing trot, it felt like we were floating and reminded me of riding Jessie, my Appendix QH gelding. I definitely look forward to creating this trot in future rides.
After the floaty trot we did one more long side where we traversed/leg yielded for straightness and then called it a day. Right now my focus is on ensuring the work we do is as correct as possible, so I stop on a good note and without really drilling what we did home and making her sour or burnt out. One of my favorite things about Lady is how much she enjoys being groomed...it's very gratifying to curry a horse that enjoys it, and lets you know she enjoys it! That was one thing I missed with Sophie, she seemed very standoffish when it came to grooming, other than having her mane brushed and her udder cleaned.
I'll ride again tomorrow, and possibly Wednesday and Thursday since I can't ride on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday due to the Eddo Hoekstra clinic I'm going to be auditing. My plan for tomorrow is more transitions, like every 6 strides transitions, and doing more travers/leg yielding to work on straightness. Once she's straighter I'd like to start introducing shoulderfore, but right now it's much easier to move her hindquarters over to get the start of straightness than her forehand!
Where do I begin??? Well, addressing where I left off...Sophie had a total of three Bowen treatments and they did wonders for her. I highly, highly, highly recommend Bowen. Jilly, my Papillon also had three treatments for her stifles and she hasn't lifted a hindleg in pain since then. Logan, my son, was born February 12th, 2010 after a month of bedrest. I rode a handful of times while on maternity leave and realized that while my husband was deployed there was no way I'd be able to ride regularly. So I made the difficult decision to sell Sophie. I put her in consignment training with Lisa Smit at Brevard Equestrian Center in Grant, FL and it was one of my smarter decisions. I highly recommend Lisa if you are looking for a trainer or instructor in Brevard County, or if you are looking for help in buying or selling a horse.
Soon after Sophie sold my husband, Craig, was offered a great job at a different Air Force base, the only catch being that we would move in July 2011, not July 2012 like we previously expected. However, the icing on the cake was that I would be able to get out of the Air Force early. So he accepted the job and I am a civilian after 8 years in the Air Force. We also live in San Antonio, TX now. So it ended up being a blessing that we had already sold Sophie.
After moving to San Antonio we had a garge sale and I sold some horse items on the garage sale. One of the shoppers was Jennifer, who keeps her three horses at a facility less than 2 miles from our house. I traded a baby swing for a lesson and had my first ever hunter/jumper lesson two weeks later. I told Jennifer that I was really interested in riding, so if she knew anyone that wasn't able to ride or needed help keeping their horse ridden to pass along my info.
Well, as fate would have it, just one week later it was Jennifer that needed help with keeping her lesson horse exercised, as she'd been rear ended in a pretty bad car accident and couldn't ride. So I am currently exercising her American Warmblood mare, Lady, until she is able to ride again. Jennifer has given me permission to teach Lady dressage. As a result I've decided to resurrect my old blog to record my new adventures. I've renamed it Dressage Nomad since we move a lot and I'm not sure when I'll have a dressage horse of my own again, so I'll be basically riding whatever horse I can get my hands on in the future.
This blog will serve as a training record and a place to keep notes about riding, especially since I'll be auditing an Eddo Hoekstra clinic in a couple of weeks and plan to audit other clinics in the future. I miss Sophie a lot, she was so much fun to ride and taught me more than I ever thought possible. And while I wish I still had her, I am excited about the opportunities the future holds as well.
