Don't Wait

Forward, forward, forward was the motto for yesterday's lesson.



We even want those big ears forward!



  Everything with Tia is easier if she's forward, engaged, and I'm not waiting.  We started on the flat with transitions.  Her upwards are pretty decent, but she likes to plow down on her front end in the downward transitions.  We did a lot of walk-trot-walk transitions trying to lighten her front end by keeping my leg on and my hand a little higher.  We got better but still need to work more on them.




We did more counter canter and she's come a long, long way.  We can hold it all the way around the arena now, and even turn to cross the diagonal.  Way to go mare!  Next week I'm going to start taking some fences on the counter canter. 

Over fences we started by spiraling out on a circle before going to a low trot fence to make sure she was forward and engaged.  She really doesn't like trot fences and I have to make sure she's using herself or else the fence is ugly.  I'm hoping that there won't be a trot fence at medal finals.




Trying get her mane to lay on the right. 

We then moved on to cantering a single outside vertical on the right with a long approach.  The right's her harder side, she wants to bulge out and drift to the left.  I have to control her shoulder in the corner than rider her forward to keep her straight. If I let her wait, or was tentative to the fence she'd get crooked and strung out.  Everything is much better if I just rider her forward.  It took a few times thru to get it but we managed.  On the landing side the push button hunter in her wants to immediately change and fall in thru the corner.  I made sure to support her with my inside leg and hold her which she did not like. 

We also worked thru a line with an oxer that was pretty close to 3ft.  I was prepared to be scared of it, as I really havent' schooled that high for a while but for whatever reason the line flowed really well and it was no problem for us.  Tia woke up for it and has some hang time over the bigger fences.  We luckily found some padding options to make my saddle work on her so I wasn't getting jumped out of the tack as much as I was in our last lesson in the Wintec saddle. I still need to work on being able to ride the bigger jump a bit better but since we're showing at 2'6" I'm not too worried.

Oregon State University oxer.  Go Beavers!

In Buddy news he got his shoes put back on yesterday and I'm going to take him out tomorrow to see how he feels.  He's been out of work for a month and I don't want to rush it.  And since I'll be focusing on Tia for the next 3 weeks we'll mostly be doing lots of short, dressagy rides with Bud.