Category: lesson notes

Lesson with L. last night. Awesome. I love having two instructors; two different perspectives, both great. They teach slightly differently. L. is much more talkative, and T. quieter but more intense in short bursts. Adjusting to them both keeps me thinking, in a good way.

Order of the night was: shoulders in alignment with haunches. It’s getting more and more subtle, but Tris still has the tendency to pop his shoulders out and twist his body, overbending and decreasing the amount of work he has to do with his hind legs.

So, outside aids, catch him before he starts, and keep him between four points – two reins, two legs, with everything gathered in my seat. I really felt like my seatbones were doing good work, for the first time in a while, which was great.

Lots and lots and LOTS of leg-yields to work on those shoulders. I started off just aiming for straight; a little bit of bend inside, and not letting his shoulders squirt out to the outside. We went from quarter line to wall, from wall to center line, from center line to quarter line, and basically every time I felt like I had him going straight I tested it out by leg yielding. He was super-responsive in the walk, but took some time in the trot to get as liquid and yielding.

His best moments were the ones in which he felt like he was leading with his haunches. He wasn’t, really, couldn’t have been, but when it felt like that was my clue that he was really, truly, solidly pushing through from the hind end and carrying with his hocks. Even a couple strides of it were fantastic.

Another problem we’re going to have to contend with from now on – now that he’s so soft and chewy in the mouth, he over flexes reallllly easily. Solution, as always, is more forward, ride him up into the bridle instead of sucking back from the bridle.

Tonight: I was hoping to work on straightness out on the trails, but it is pouring buckets. I will jump on for a bit – not long – and work on responsiveness. I want to make sure I have the well-behaved horse I hope to have for the hunter pace on Sunday.

Saturday I also hope to hit the trails and fields for some gallop-and-come-back practice just to ease my nerves a bit more.

Lesson last night!

Soft came right away; forward took some time to add in. He was also stiff and resistant off the left leg. But we worked for a long time in the trot, pushing off the inside leg and keeping a rhythm with the outside leg. I think in our future we’re going to head out to a field somewhere and concentrate very hard on just keeping rhythm, start a metronome in my head and keep it ticking through trot work.

We did squares, counting out strides and then turning on haunches. He can make a 90 degree angle in two strides easily now, but I need to start making it more supple. When he turns, he’s like a block of wood, and I have to concentrate very hard on keeping him between legs and hands to make sure he doesn’t ooze out anywhere. He also braces against my hands. So some pieces are there, but not all of them. I think I need more of a leg-yield feel in the turning, not be focused so hard on the great pendulum swing of him coming around the corner.

Leg-yields were good, but as always keeping track of the outside shoulder was a huge challenge. He had a couple really, really nice moments of stepping underneath himself, and as always he felt much better in his circles after some leg yields. In particular, carrying through the leg-yield feel into doing spirals in and out put him more and more into the bridle, and for a few strides at a time I had that beautiful, malleable feeling of holding him between my hips and hands, his energy and my concentration filling up that space.

He’s using his hocks more and more, putting more and more lift and spring into his steps. Sometimes I look up at the mirror and wonder whose horse that is, round and using his hocks and with a thin line of foam at his mouth from chewing the bit. When he’s really spot-on every drop of Spanish blood in him comes through in the thick curve of his neck and the bulk of his shoulders being used to swing instead of brace.

Canter transitions are coming along, especially the right. Left is still dicey; he’s always been tougher that way, though, no surprise. We are slowly erasing his tendency to flip his head and brace outside just before the transition, to ask for the push and lift and rocking horse feel. Going left, we worked hard on leg-yielding him out on a spiral *while* asking for the transition, really focusing all his energy into bending left, then asking for the canter, and keeping the inside leg push through the canter, and then *especially* through the down transition, spiraling all the way back out, not letting him even think for a second of flipping back to the outside or stalling out through the down transition. It was *hard* but we got some really glorious work out of it.

I’ve been thinking of dressage lately like whittling your perfect horse out of an enormous block of wood, maybe a whole tree trunk. At first you can easily lop off large pieces, and then as you get closer, you slow down, you only take a sliver at a time but you’re getting closer to the moment when you can crack another large piece. Tris and I are in that slivering phase right now, but we’ll come around to another large piece soon enough, and the cycle starts again. It’s more than a little addicting, this sport.