Dressage Lesson= Tools for Communication

We had major success tonight, and I rocked my eval!

Although, she wasn’t quite the same horse I evaluated the day before! She wasn’t “motoring” along quite the same. Might have something to do with it being a pleasant 60 degrees and sunny instead of cloudy, damp and in the high 30s!! (Amazingly enough I actually left work in enough time to be ON my horse at 4pm! I should get an award just for that!)

Stacie confirmed that she also thinks that she is stiff left and hollow right, although the lead in the back seemed to happen both directions, so that is another issue. We did see confirmation when doing some leg yielding that she was indeed carrying her haunches more to her hollow side. Our yielding to the right was great! Our yielding to the left needed much more support to get the haunches all the way over to the stiff side.

So we really did work on some of what I thought would help! Lateral movement at the walk, stretchy trot, and half halts in a creative way. What I would have been missing is the eyes on the ground to fix my position errors (hands too low, or uneven, legs not active enough and seat too active, or too active when I should be using my seat). I know it! I just haven’t fixed it yet. The biggest improvement was our communication. I know what I want, I even know what exercises to help get to the goal, I just don't always seem to be able to communicate all this to the horse!

Stacie had me start a pattern of aids: strong inside rein directly back for more bend, with a slight allowing rein outside, followed by lightly taking that outside rein back up, then pushing for more impulsion. This series would take several strides, but created a predictable pattern to start over exactly at the time that we needed more bend again. Lola immediately got it! We had some great trot work!

 Our canter improved immensely when I really started to ride it. I think I was trying to sit neutral and not interfere, when really I needed to put it together. So when I rode it like I was trying to do something with it, the collection and shape came together more. She also quit swapping leads in the back when I kept her haunches in on the circle. I think she just was swinging them out farther and switching to balance. By keeping the bend we kept all four feet on the correct lead.

We also started working on the stretchy trot! So pleased with this part of the lesson, because I knew it was what I would want to work on with her, but wasn’t sure how to get the results I needed. Working though it in the lesson was great because we got pretty immediate success having someone with so many tips and tricks guide from the ground. Lola got it pretty well going left, but wasn’t as good going right. So Stacie had me get some good stretch going left, then try to keep it as we smoothly changed through a serpentine. As we lost it we shortened back up to a working trot for the rest of the circle and switched back to our left circle on the serpentine to get the stretch back then switched back to right to see how long we could keep stretching. Great results!

So bottom line:

I have good ideas, but I’m glad to have help with the execution.

Lola and I built up our communication skills and got much better results.

Now she and I are on the same page on a few things, I can really feel what a great horse I have under me!

It also helped that Stacie was raving about how good her muscles look, and what nice impulsion she has. I am so lucky that the girl leasing her took such great care of her and put so much time into her conditioning and training. She really has come a long way in a year.

So proud of her!