Yet Another Recap

Lesson night arrived sunny and unseasonably warm. Poor Midge, she's already starting to rock the Thelwell look so she was sweaty after even a light warmup. My lesson mate wanted to work on dressage, but I wanted to do jumping after our fantastic lesson last week. Neither of us were overly committed to either cause, so we let EC break the tie. She opted for jumping, but of the gymnastic sort with lots of changes of direction, so essentially a dressage lesson with little bumps in the way :)

Bridget was again very excited (for her - seriously, don't imagine an excited horse when I say that, imagine a normal horse being forward off the aids and taking you to the jumps and you are closer to her "excited" level of energy. The whoa button is still right there waiting the moment you think about it.

Bridget had zero issues and found it all rather easy. I had some moments where I forgot to look up and through the line and got either a bit ahead or behind, but nothing terribly awful. It's starting to feel more and more like we are a team. The awkward green pony/rider stuff is becoming a lot less frequent and I feel like we're quickly becoming a capable pair. It might not always be pretty, but neither is it scary - big progress, lol.

Homework:

-Trot in, canter out, canter in, out over jumps. Whichever, just make the transitions my idea. This mostly amounts to making her wait before the fences and keeping her forward a few strides after. There is a definite pony magnet effect with fences right now - she locks in and wants to charge on over, but loses the momentum going away (until you show her the next one!)

-Canter figure eights. Canter circle, accurate transition to trot as I change direction and immediately ask for canter again on new lead. Idea being as few trot strides as possible, getting accurate and correct transitions to each lead. This is going to be a tough one for me, as I'm in the habit of really babying Bridget and trying to set her up perfectly with a corner to help. I'm also too forgiving about the amount of time it takes to get the transition. EC is obviously on to us if she's assigning this as practice.

-Canter, canter, canter. It needs to be reliably adjustable before we can move up. We're making some progress but there is still a real tendency for us to get stuck in one (too flat/quick) speed, particularly outside of grids and related distances.

-And, my own reminder to self, use the extra energy Bridget brings to jumping to sneak in some dressage between fences.   I like to think I'm fairly good at that, but I do catch myself now and then opting to just go along with her and let myself be taken for the ride rather than being more proactive about riding a good corner and a straight line.

- TAKE MORE PICTURES! Thanks for being patient on that front....