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I didn't take a lot of notes for horse 4...mainly because I was too busy drooling over the amazingly gorgeous black Trakehner mare in the ring. The epitome of dream horse for me. The big thing they did to start was stretchy circles, give with rt hand, drive with rt leg, give with left hand, drive with left leg, and so on, slowly feeding the reins to the horse one side and a little bit at a time.
When doing walk to halt transitions stop your body and wait for the horse to lessen forward movement; if it doesn't in a few steps then use your hands to ask too.
Practice using your seat bones to ask for the walk.
After doing walk-trot-walk transitions ride while thinking of rebalancing for the walk but don't actually walk. This helps to improve the trot tremendously! You can also shift your inside hip forward and ask for the canter during one of these rebalancings.
The next horse they worked on managing the go of the horse without trying to stop it. While they did shallow loops they added in walk/trot transitions on one long side. Then the next long side they would just trot with lengthened strides. After around 3 laps they would change directions.
There will never be spring without swing!
Walk-trot transitions on a circle, ride the horse "slightly in" when walking (without steering though, steering is blocking) after this reverse directions on a new circle through the canter like previous horse.
After the horse has become good at the shallow loops (or maybe more accurately, once the rider is proficient at guiding the horse through shallow loops) then you can do shoulder in, guide back to the wall, haunches in, back to the wall, etc. Very small SI/HI, so the horse doesn't realize it's doing it.
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!
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!
