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Short, sweet ride on Wednesday. Limber and loose in the walk, so we forged on into the trot. In retrospect: probably a bit too soon, as he was hopping a bit in the first few strides of the trot, asking to canter instead of trot. I pushed through with the trot instead and he shook it off after a quarter circle.

The ring was very busy, so we didn’t do nearly as much circling/spiralling as we usually would to start off, and more complicated figures were out of the question. So we warmed up in big long laps, diagonals, working for soft and forward on the (sometimes) trickier straight line.

We worked on transitions, in part because I am a bit nervous about the hunter pace on Sunday – His Highness has run away with me enough times to still leave some residual caution in my brain. I’m getting better about it. But in the meantime: transitions and lots of ’em, concentrating on the quality in the gait before we make the transition, concentrating on keeping all parts where they need to be through the transition, and keeping the forward impulse through down transitions.

He was a bit more stiff to the left than usual; rather, he was stiff and didn’t work out of it quite as well as he usually does, probably in part because I couldn’t put him on a 20m circle and really work him out of it.

Did a little bit of canter to the right, focusing on the quality of the transition again. Walk-trot, trying to stay forward and uphill, then capturing that upward into trot-canter, really not letting him fling his head up and his body to the outside, and his canter was MUCH better as a result. Got some really, really nice stuff.

Saturday: long hack outside with some quick work to test the brakes and attention span, then Sunday the hunter pace!

Saturday, first ride in a week, after reports that His Highness had been stiff and resistant for Hannah and C. Not unusual for him, just had been a while since he’d done it.

I actually have quite a few pictures, one or two of them very nice, and I will try and put them up soon.

Tris warmed up stiff, as reported, but a jumpy kind of stiff – not just slow and sluggish. More like there was more jerky movement than I was used to. He wasn’t exactly forward, but nor was he really painfully behind the leg like he can be. He softened laterally beautifully; always nice when I ride him the day after L. or T. does! (L. rode him instead of my lesson this week, pre-empted by a grad school function.)

He just wasn’t very loose and swingy in a forward direction, so we worked a lot on that. Really most of my focus was on the outside hind leg, engaging it. His inside hind steps under beautifully – maybe even too easily and too quickly. He’s much more willing to just spin around on that inside hind than he is to push off evenly with the outside hind, especially going right. So we worked on not letting him just swoop under and ignore the rest of his body. Lots of spiral circles, and when those weren’t getting at the problem quickly enough, I tried some leg yielding.

His leg yields have really come a long, long way this summer, and when I can coordinate my aids to ask for a correct one, they are really good for him, one of his magic bullet exercises. Even if they don’t work, they help me figure out what the problem is. (Usually my lack of outside aids…) These were great: any bulging and surging through the outside shoulder was easily corralled, and in doing so it meant he really had to push with his outside hind, because he couldn’t just swing through and zip to the wall. Trot work became much better.

Canter is still a work in progress. Departs to the right were pretty good, but departs to the left need some work. I can’t quite juggle enough things with my body to support him as he needs to be held together through the depart. Unless I have every.single.one of my ducks in a row he throws his shoulder out, giraffes his neck, and scrambles through the transition. I’m getting better and better so that now he will most of the time get his lead, but as can be imagined transitions like that are not exactly conducive to lift and push in the canter itself.

We had one decent transition and about a half-circle of very nice canter in the left, after which I called it a day. I jumped off, gave the saddle to my mother, and crawled up bareback. Very patient pony to put up with my leap and scramble from the ground – I used to be able to do it in one jump and swing. More practice! We wandered around the ring for a while cooling him out, then outside to watch a bit of a jump lesson and take a 5+ minute drink from a puddle.

So: good. My body took a bit longer than I wanted to figure things out again after a week and a half break, and I’m still keeping an eye on his stiffness. (He was also a bit spooky about one of the mirrors – half fogged up – which is unusual for him. He’s got two abscesses on his jaw from tick bites, so…if this keeps up I’ll see about a Lyme titer.)

Lesson Tuesday, hack/conditioning on Wednesday if I can fit it in before the light goes, otherwise I’ll see about schooling him bareback. Supposedly I’ve been volunteered for a bareback jump lesson this winter, so I should probably see about getting my bareback seat back…

Quick summary of where we’ve been:

In the good, T. said at the beginning of last week’s lesson that my lower leg was lightyears better, that I’d obviously been working very hard on it. So hooray for that! (I’d almost always rather someone say “clearly, you’ve been working hard” than “wow, great job!”) Then, in that same lesson, we started to reprogram Tristan’s canter departs, to make them lift-and-jump instead of scramble-and-fall. Impulsion, not speed. So Tristan promptly did his best “I don’t remember how to canter!” impression and things disintegrated from there.

We’re also continuing the elusive pursuit of a back-to-front connection, especially through the base of his neck, and adding tiny pieces each day. He is usually going soft not long after I pick up the reins now, and is slowly getting much more supple left and right. His resistance in that regard is waffling between the old stuck shoulders and a new jello-pony that can’t stay in one place to save his life. Somewhere down the middle, as always, is the way to go.

Hannah offered her Tucker to me for a few minutes after her ride last week, too, and WOW. What a neat, neat horse; I got off and handed her the reins and said “that’s quite a sports car of a horse you’ve got there.” So, so, so different from Tristan: narrower, and springier, and inclined to rushing instead of lagging, and such an interesting and new set of feedback. I loved especially the spring and float in the trot and am carrying the feeling over into what I’m asking of Tristan. He’ll never spring, but he can work toward a lot more hock action than he’s currently giving!

Saturday I spent quite a while at the barn, did homework outside Tris’s stall, and watched girls braid ponies. He was dripping wet from the pouring rain outside, so I threw a cooler on and he steamed off. I jumped on just in jeans and my Ariat sneakers, and he worked so well so quickly that after 15 minutes I was done. His trot in particular felt great: all our losses of impulsion were quickly corrected, and on the whole he was more consistent. We had, if not lift, then at least push in our canter departs in both directions, and softening and bend in the right lead. Our biggest challenge was focus: the ring was being raked and watered for the show, and had pieces of the dressage ring at one end. By making very sure I was making him think about the work I wanted him to do instead of the scary, evil hose, he eventually worked through and hey, if there was a little zip to his gaits, so much the better.

This week: C. is riding him tonight, lesson Tuesday, hack/hill work Wednesday, and then on Sunday some off-property trail riding.