I COMPLETELY forgot to blog about my lesson weekend in February. So, now I'm running around like a total nutter updating things (mainly my severely neglected blogs), packing, and getting ready for the first show of the season! Ah! Where did the time go?!?! But I digress, let's begin...
The title of this blog is ever so appropriate since all we have been having the past few days is storms. I had my lesson last Wednesday on a gorgeous, rain-free afternoon. Since the last lesson weekend (yea, the one I forgot to blog about...doh!) was about my lack of a nice collected canter, my homework was (yet again) a half-halted, up, light, slower, with active hind-leg canter...not too much to ask, right? I worked for a month on just that! Lynn watched me warm-up at the trot and something new I had not heard before left her lips, "Wow!" and there were LOTS of them. His trot was relaxed, supple and super rideable. We didn't do much since the trot was so spot on. We moved onto the canter with hopes I would hear the same amount of "wow's" as the trot, unfortunately not as many but she did notice a big change in quality! Yay, one step at a time right?!?!
We worked on more half-halts to just slow him a bit more. My new problem is instead on pulling him down into the simple changes, I have left his head alone so that the transition will not be affected but in doing so, I end up dropping him by not doing anything. We did a few more simples both directions and then I really made a wrong move. I guess now I can't look at it as a bad decision because I needed to work on it anyways since the show is in...oh, 3 days!!! I asked Lynn to look at the counter-canter to evaluate where we were. I also opened my big mouth and told her of my severe dislike of the counter-canter, especially the counter-canter serpentine in Second Level Test 1. But, because I signed up to do all three tests at least once this weekend, I was made to run through all the ways counter-canter is done in the tests. Since the first one didn't go so well (rushing, on the forehand, rider not doing much to stop the first two problems, etc. You know, the normal!), the new exercise was 20m counter-canter circles each direction. This was FAR harder than the original exercise but Lynn did this so that way when I went back to the serpentine or the tear drops from Second 3, it wouldn't be so foreboding. After much griping and whining, I did the hard circles then ran through the serpentine again and wouldn't ya know it, much easier: more balanced and hey those half-halts really do work when you sit up and ask for them!
Overall, really great lesson especially since it's the last one before the show this weekend. Since then, I've had 2 great rides and a not so great ride. We will get there on Thursday afternoon/evening and I'll ride him around the indoor since this is a new venue for the both of us. I'm nervous but really excited since I feel that we really have a good grasp on Second level this year and we're just about ready to start Third...yippee! See you in a few days!
No comments:
Post a Comment