Get Your Butt In Gear

Ulcer-prone pony is spoiled.

SO. Riding. I do that.

This long weekend/short week thing has me all confused.. but.. a quick recap of our past couple rides:

Friday I stuck the pony in the waterford because he had been a freight train and was insisting that I carry him around the ring the day before. Um, no. He was much more polite in his tune-up bit, and after warming up we ran through our T1 test. It wasn't the greatest thing ever, but we actually had a really nice left lead canter, so I'll take it. Dino wasn't quite as tuned in to my seat as I'd like, and the trot/halt was pretty sloppy. Some good things, some not-so-good, such is training.

Homeboy had the three day weekend off, and I flatted him again yesterday in his regular D-ring. Dino was all "Sweet this means I can dump myself into your hands, right?" No. No you cannot. I had planned on just working on going from stretchy trot to working trot and free walk to medium, but being unable to get him off his forehand put a bit of a kibosh on that. So instead we went the rapid-fire transition route. Walk/trot/halt/reinback/shoulder-in/canter/etc etc ad nauseum. After all of that he relented and used his butt and we had some really nice moments in all three gaits.

It's amazing how much easier everything comes to my pony when he puts his body in the correct place. Who would have thought?!

Today I'm going to put him back in the Waterford for good measure and really spend some time working him off my seat, and maybe throw in a few small fences to get the engine going, probably use the driving rein again to fix any contact issues on my part that might be causing him not to want to connect with my hand.

And maybe I should take a look at that T2 test at some point...