Friday Frolicks

I dug up a book I got a while ago, 101 Dressage Exercises. I don't ride dressage, but I was looking for some way to shake up the same-old same-old hacking on the flat. I browsed through the first couple of pages a few nights ago, which happened to be on warming up your horse. After properly color-coding them so it didn't look like a swarm of black dots and dashes, I figured out the gist of them and decided to start implementing them during the next few weeks while I focus on flatwork.

Today we did some lengthening/shortening at the trot; it was interesting to say the least. She gets very tense when I ask for a slow sitting trot; her head comes up and she fights the contact until I push her forward enough that she submits to the contact. From there she is less abrasive, but starts to duck behind the vertical which is a big no-no. So the sitting trot is pretty rusty at the moment and needs a lot of fine-tuning. When I asked for a lengthening (really just a regular working trot, I wanted her to have an opportunity to decompress between the sitting trots) she would sit on my leg, then jump forward into a faster trot. So that needs a little more work as well; hopefully we'll be transitioning and adjusting like pros soon! I did some circles at the trot as well to work on bending. She's slowly becoming more supple, but she still has a hard time bending throughout her body. She likes to turn with her body straight, or thrust her haunches in while shoving her shoulders out. After a couple of minor spooks most likely caused by another horse coming straight at her (it's hypothesized that she was run in to on the track, since she freaks out whenever another horse comes at her) she was agitated and unresponsive, and had become stiff throughout her body. To remedy this I did the 'needlepoint' exercise from the book; we had some motorcycle turns at first but she settled down and started listening to my leg again. So yay exercises!

Her canter work was, in a word, beautiful. She's usually very upright at the canter- in a frame, but a very high frame. Today she really stretched down (which helped my hand position SO MUCH!) and was relaxed from the moment we began cantering. One thing I did notice is that she tended to begin leaning on her forehand in the lower frame, but I remedied that easily by picking her up and reminding her to use her hind end. We did lots of circles at the canter, since she's come to anticipate lead changes and get really frantic and scrambly whenever we take a turn through the center. After one or two she settled down; began listening to my leg when I asked her to bend correctly, and really settled beautifully. Then we executed a perfect lead change, cantered left, and basically repeated what had happened to the right. It's odd; she bends correctly going left but gets fast through circles, whereas to the right she maintains her pace but can't bend as well.

All in all, today was a very successful ride. I should really listen to myself more often; I'm quite smart ;)