Yesterday was Monday which is usually sort of an off day. I've really needed to be able to find some time to work on the dressage stuff we've been learning in lessons. So, I tacked up and headed to the indoor. I was just warming up when Martha came in and asked if I wanted a lesson. Duh. I hadn't yet gotten to practice what we had learned in our last dressage lesson (the shoulder-in) and I like to have a session just me and Hick inbetween our lessons to really try to work through our issues. But it was a good learning lesson. It's now time to start putting Hickory in more of a frame when we're walking and trotting, so we worked on that.. having a consistent frame. A lot on posting and keeping the arms very still and steady to maintain a consistent connection, posting to your arms. Also, I'm supposed to start every ride by walk/trot/cantering and doing transitions without stirrups to loosen up and get moving with the horse. Our shoulder-in's at the walk were really good. We had issues at the trot. I couldn't get him to move his body off of my inside leg. When i would put it on him he would say 'oh speed up????' instead of 'move sideways?' So we worked that for a while and then martha left to let us work on our own some. Once I wrapped my head around things, which is a lot of the time most of the problem, we started doing some leg yielding at the trot as a reminder that leg does not always mean go faster, it can also mean move over sideways. Then we attempted some more shoulder in and it was much improved. We did some canter work, also, mainly transitions and one leg yielding pass in each direction and then that was definitely enough for him for one day.
Today we had a jumping lesson with the ladies. Things to work on: having compressibility of my horse. Need to be able to compress and expand him like an accordion between jumps. We had one line that was supposed to be a 6 stride and we kept getting it in 5 and I could not get him to compress to get it in 6. And that's fine for today, considering that everything we've been teaching him has been 'go go go!' But it's something to work on. Also, I need to get stronger and learn to land in more in my heels on our landing. I tend to land on my hands and get pulled forward. So when I come out to practice jumping I'm supposed to take my stirrups off and jump a lot of little stuff with no stirrups to get stronger. I got to ride Denera today which I was reeeeaaalllyyyy excited about. She is one of Martha's clients' horses. She is a gigantic Westfalen mare from Germany that Martha is competing. She is my favorite horse on the entire farm. It's the bay that Martha was riding at the Jan Byyny clinic (Amanda, Audrey, Diane). And she needed to be exercised today so I got to take her for a 20 minute trot. And it was fuuun!
Oh! And Hickory got a boo boo on his face somehow. He has a big lumb right smack in the middle of his face. It looks similarly to what you think of when you hear someone has broken their nose. Pictures to come.
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