We actually successfully cantered a few circles!

Now that we've gotten the concept of "straight"...leg yielding is so much easier! On Tuesday we warmed up with the usual alternating counter-bend, true-bend exercise, then progressed to doing a few short leg yields once both directions of bend were established. It's so much less work to get a good leg yield now that I can pretty much "feel" when Radar is straight. We definitely were more successful than previous attempts. The other big breakthrough was in our canter work, which once again all comes back to straightness and the outside rein. Radar's canter is pretty bad, and takes a fair amount of micro-managing to get it done successfully for more than a few strides. I wish I still had access to Bandit, who I could literally canter around on the buckle and really work on my seat and myself. My lesson concluded with a bunch of canter work, and I actually managed to get Radar around a few circles without breaking-- and our downward transitions have gotten so much better, I can really get him settled and organized now. A very good ride overall.

Forwardness and transitions

In my lesson on Friday I worked a lot on the idea of forwardness in both my upwards and downwards transitions. At the walk I tried to get Radar as forward as possible while not making him strung out, so that I could get good trot transitions without having to resort to using my whip. We did more work with trotting forward into canter-trot transitions and was slightly more successful than last week.

Independent hands and the canter

Tuesday's Ride:
I actually had a great ride on Tuesday, despite the ridiculous rain and arena flooding... we actually used the flooded areas to provide good places to leg-yield. I've kind of found the "sweet spot" as far as figuring out when I'm sitting straight in the sitting trot--finally I'm not over-correcting myself and over rotating. It's much more comfortable, too.

Friday's Ride:
On Friday I actually had a funny experience when my sitting trot was easier than the posting trot! It's so much easier to feel my own straightness when I'm sitting. I worked on my elbows and hands and trying both to allow my arms to "bounce" ever-so-slightly, and re-thinking the half-halt as stopping that "bounce" a bit. Radar is great for exercises like this since he doesn't really get offended by over-exaggeration and trying to figure something out. The idea of allowing my hands to do two rather different things at once really helped me with the left-lead canter departs, too, in that I figured out the concept of counter-bending without completely abandoning the true bend. Some good short canter spurts, especially once I got the concept of making him actively go down to the trot instead of just falling into it. A really good lesson!

A fun exercise ride

Did a short exercise ride on Bandit before volunteering this afternoon, it was so much fun! I'm sad there is only one more week of the year left, I enjoy riding him. Did a lot of trying to bend him, maintaining some sort of rhythm at the trot, slowing him down with my seat and organizing his trot a bit. I have to say again that I enjoy his canter so, so much! It's funny since he works best with minimal contrast-- quite a departure from the need-contact-to-canter issues I've been having in my lessons. His canter (well, lope-- it's slow!) is so smooth and easy to ride. I tried to work on keeping my elbows back and, of course, my seat deep to prepare me for tomorrow's lesson. All in all, a very fun ride even though I didn't quite "work" as much as in a formal lesson

Schooling the Transitions

So in my lesson on Friday, I did my usual warm up, working on bending, counter-bending, etc. Unfortunately, Radar's trot seems to be best when he's slightly counter-bent to the right to deal with his drift - fine for schooling, but not ideal for showing. While any judge should see what/why he's being ridden that way, you'd still get deducted for it. Hence, he won't be a show pony any time soon! When we went into the canter Mia had an interesting idea for me. Since I (and basically all the people who regularly ride him) am not strong enough to school Radar's canter (well, keep him cantering while schooling it!), we worked on schooling the transitions into and out of the canter. Basically, bending and establishing contact with the outside rein to get a good canter depart, cantering literally four or five strides, then bringing him down into an organized trot. Believe it or not, that actually worked and we got some fairly organized canter and trot transitions. It was a really good lesson, although I do wonder sometimes how my skills would translate onto a horse with both dressage training and some natural ability for the discipline. I've spent so long riding horses with physical issues and off-breeds, it would be sort of fascinating to see how that would translate into a proper "dressage" horse...

Had a funny issue vision-wise this lesson, too... I have Moebius Syndrome, a neurological disorder which among other things means that many (most?) of my eye muscles are paralyzed. I kept cutting off each end of the arena when I was riding the quarter-lines of the long sides... I literally felt like I was about to crash when I was in fact 10 feet away! At least I was the only person riding in the arena at that time, so I only had to watch out for myself. Luckily by the time I got onto my canter circle I was doing slightly better but it was kind of weird since that doesn't usually happen too often.

Riding a "school horse"

Although Radar is privately-owned, the fact that his owner subsidizes her board by allowing him to be ridden in lessons makes him in some ways similar to the school horses I have ridden my entire riding life. Thankfully these are mainly "good" things - being ridiculously patient, tolerant of somewhat questionable riding at times, and generally a pretty easy-going personality. Alas, today, I experienced a rare not-so-good product of riding a horse ridden by others - the after-effects of so-so rides that you have no control over. Yesterday Radar was worked pretty hard and wasn't too happy about it. Today when I asked him for a little bit of right bend on a circle tracking left, he really got resistant to it and totally ignored my aids. We decided to forgo the circle entirely, and just worked on bending both ways going large. Thankfully that worked well, and I ended up with a forward, bending and happy pony.

I brought my camera out and Mia got a few really good photos of us - I really want to try to be better about this, thinking about all the horses I have ridden over the years who I don't have any photos of to remember them with... I played around a bit with Photoshop to make myself a desktop background with these photos: