Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Another nice ride...

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!

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