Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Just because I can....





Chapiro always pops over the wall to Cacahuète's waterer, he has his own but I guess it's just because he can. Chapiro makes me smile and the more I'm getting to know him the better I like him.

Just rode Moo in the school and he went really well. This was following two days of lunging and I think that certainly helps as we now work on trot/canter transitions as well as all the other stuff and that seems to be helping his balance. It's very easy to see on the lunge how he finds correct left bend difficult and on the right rein to see how tight it is but how much more correct the bend is (much firmer and into the outside). I never use side reins and I think this helps highlight the problems.

Riding today the walk was instantly more balanced and positive without rushing. Worked on renvers into shoulder-in to help that outside contact on the left rein and counter shoulder-in to travers...little leg yield to stretch and of course halt/rein back etc

Trot was really better balanced and I could comfortably rise to it without the feeling it would escape from me. Even managed to put my leg on for some corner work and he stayed quite calm. Trot/walk transitions were reasonably OK but we need to work on them becoming *the norm* so that he doesn't get so excited, yee ha!!!
I'm really enjoying this work, if you hadn't noticed.

2 comments:

Claire said...

great pic!

it's always useful to see what's happening on the ground, and i'm finding its interesting seeing the ground work transfer to ridden and vice versa!

Anonymous said...

ha ha great picture, what a character!