Breathe like a Dressage Rider

 We had a bit of a breakthrough in our canter transitions in my lesson on Friday. While we've had slow by steady progress on them, the first one or two each ride are still a bit rough. And while Trainer A has managed to do walk-canters, I've had a lot of trouble managing them. 

Mya, the other chestnut mare, is a very, very expensive International Hunter Derby hopeful and I told Cinder to soak up all of her knowledge when they were in the cross ties together

 

It didn't help that on Friday Cinder was very not feeling it. It was hot and oddly humid, and there was no breeze moving the air around. When I went to get Cin she was in the middle of her afternoon nap and reluctantly got up when I opened her stall door. She was behind my leg the whole lesson, even when we started jumping. While maybe not the lesson I had been hoping for, I did learn a lot on how to ride "behind-the-leg-Cinder."

Will work for cookies

During our flat warm-up, I was struggling more than usual with the canter transitions when A stopped me and apologized. She asked if she had told me about the double breath inhale. I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, and she explained that since you can't use your voice in dressage, a lot of dressage riders use breath cues with their horses. A does a quick double breath inhale, like two quick sniffs, as she's asking for the upward canter transition. She then sent us back out on our circle to try it, and what do you know, it worked wonders. Our transitions were much more prompt, and we even managed a decent walk-canter. 

Very happy with how she's looking right now

 As I said above, the jump portion of the lesson was a bit of train wreck. I kept seeing the long spot,  while Cinder, who has finally learned to wait and add the stride, kept seeing the short one. We had a couple spectacular chips, before I got after her and made her take the long ones. We ended with an outside line that was a long 5 or short 6 and since the jumps were 2' and Cinder was not inclined to go forward, A told me to do the 6. I came in thinking wait for the six, but we ended up waiting for the 7. Oops. The next time through I let her flow more, and even then on stride 4 I realized it was going to be long and I was determined we would not chip, so I sat down, dug my heels in and clucked like hell. We got the six and then did the line one last time to smooth things out. I still had to leg her down the line, but not nearly as much as the time before and we quit with that.