Saturday, January 29, 2011

Gorgeous Day!

Two beautiful days in a row - naturally I had to work Friday, but I still managed a quick ride on Pico late afternoon.  We worked on bend and transitions - especially the trot canter trot transitions.  It's a lot of work, but he no longer bolts into the canter and sometimes he doesn't fall into it from that trot....

Today I rode Pico again, same agenda, but added in some leg yield.  Canter work was noticeably better.  I would probably have a trot-canter transition if I rode him every day for a couple of weeks.  After arena work I rode up the rode 3/4 mile and back.  He was quite well-behaved.

Dragged out my double for Gracie for the first time ever.  She doesn't seem to mind the extra hardware in her mouth.  I realized I haven't been riding in a snaffle - she wants to ignore it.  The curb has more shank than the pelham I have been using, so she wasn't overly fond of that either.  I really focused on the snaffle... and on watching my seat, no collapsing to the inside and stop looking down, which of course causes the collapse.  The piaffe was okay, extended trot was fantastic.  We worked on picking up whichever lead I asked for anywhere in the arena and that was hard hard hard.

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