Foiled by Fishy...

I have lost my diagonals. I mentioned it last lesson to Kim, and she said she was surprised because I normally don't have trouble with them. I was having problems today too, this time thinking I was on the wrong diagonal when I was good. Then Kim said the dreaded words..."It's because you're pregnant". Apparently she had the same kind of problems when she was pregnant.

Today Sophie was bending her neck incorrectly, she counter bends while appearing to be bent correctly (to the uneducated observer that is). So I had to do lots of half halts with the outside rein to keep her neck straight and then ask for correct bend once she was straight. We started out by asking for transitions on a 20 meter circle. I have a tendency to brace with my arms when asking for a lesser gait, which just gives Sophie something to brace against. So we worked mainly on me, half halting constantly through the trainsition and keeping my elbows loose and hands playful, not pulling, but giving and taking, with more give and very light on the take, if that makes sense.

We did this on a 20 meter circle in both directions. As she improved we started doing it on the diagonal. We started getting a nice transition, but lost the quality of the walk after the transition, so I started focusing on keeping my seat and hands following and the after got better, but the transition deteriorated. Eventually I got it and the transition and the walk were much better, as was the transition back to the trot. (We were trotting across the diagonal, walking right before reaching X, walking across X, and trotting after crossing X).

Of course, after about 10 diagonals Sophie started walking automatically because she had caught on to what we were doing. So we changed it up, but doing 3 loop serpentines and walking when we crossed the centerline, then picking the trot up right away. We did those a handful of times and then we worked on leg yielding in both directions. Sophie did much better, she was much more responsive to my leg and very even and steady in the reins.

After some leg yielding we had a walk break and talked about riding while pregnant. Of course, it ended up being a long break and Sophie was kind of annoyed by the restarting work, I think she thought she was done, lol. After I had a nice trot going we worked on the canter again. It was much less barrel pony on crack and even could be considered training level dressage horse canter at times.

We cantered in the other direction and she was a very good girl, so we let her trot again and do some stretchy circles in both directions. Then I walked her for 15 minutes and put her away. It was a shorter lesson than normal, but we covered a lot and made a lot of improvements. I'm going to focus mainly on transitions and leg yielding during my off time.

I also discovered that I've been placing my foot on the stirrup wrong. Instead of keeping my foot toward the inside of the stirrup I keep it pressed against the outside of the stirrup which encourages me to toe out. I tried fixing it for the canter work, which I think is part of the reason why Sophie had trouble getting back into the swing of things. I can feel the different strain on my leg when I have them in the right place. So for now I'm retraining my feet/legs while walking (part of the reason I walked for 15 minutes after the lesson, to practice keeping my feet in the right place). After I get better at the walk I'll start adding some trotwork too. It might take all winter, but I *will* stop toeing out!

First lesson done...

I had my first lesson with Kim on Sophie today. It was...interesting. Sophie was very upset to be in the arena and not out with the other horses, especially since they were being turned out for the day. So we started out with walking skinny serpentines, doing lots of changes of direction to get her focusing on me, not how miserable she was being alone in the indoor. After she was mainly paying attention to me we started adding in stops as well. Then I would ask her to walk forward solely by lifting my seat. Which she ignored, so I would back it up with leg (though not fast enough for Kim!). We worked on that for a bit and then Sophie decided she was still unhappy about being in the indoor and started flipping her head.

Kim told me to urge her forward, so I would give with my hands while sitting up straight and giving her an open window to be able to move forward. Eventually during a move forward phase she broke out trotting, so we ended up trotting lots of serpentines, with her trying to slow down to toss her head every now and then. But there were breakthroughs...sometimes after a head tossing episode suddenly her head would come down, she would round to the bit and move beautifully. We started doing circles as well and got loads of nice work and less head tossing.

By the end of the lesson we were trotting around the whole ring working on stretching down and out while performing the most amazing trot ever. At that point Kim said she was looking like a Trakehner now and it was wonderful. Kim said that we should score well though and the she's a really nice mover. So that made me feel a lot better about everything.

And an interesting side note, Sophie is the boss of her little group in the pasture, even though she's younger and smaller than the other two horses. But she tells them were to go and they do it. I was hoping to get to The Tack Trunk today to pick up another trial saddle, but I just couldn't make the drive after spending all morning at the barn. My body was pretty exhausted from all of the gardening and cleaning over this last week. So we're going to try to make it out tomorrow morning before meeting up with my sister. Not ideal, but I needed a three hour nap and wouldn't have made it after. Hopefully the perfect saddle is there, and I can look at the KK's.