Around and around we go

So today was an amazing lesson. After warming up, we started working on shoulder-in down the long side, 10 meter circle at E or B, and then haunches-in (travers) when we got back to the rail. Lateral work is getting MUCH easier for T-Bone and altho it isn't perfect yet, every day gets better.

We moved on to some turns on the haunches at the walk - our best movement by far. After a couple of times each direction, my instructor (Jen) says to trot and think turn on the haunches at the trot. At first, both T-Bone and I were confused (it's a difficult movement to do), but when we did nail it - wa-lah - HALF STEPS! We didn't spend too long on this, just enough to let T-Bone know he was on the right track and that he was making good efforts. Canter work included some colelction exercises - including "think push his haunches out" at the canter, almost as if to make him cross his back legs. Well this resulted in a really uphill, collected canter. And when Jen said "think turn on the haunches in canter", it was as if we had been doing canter piroettes all summer ... ok, it wasn't as tight as it should be, but be nailed a very nice schooling half piroette. T-Bone's best gait is the canter and he has no problem sitting and cantering in a very collected fashion. It's so cool! Trot lengthenings will be a different story ... it's not his strong point, and never will be. We'll have to make everything else awesome in order to make up for a lack-luster extensions.

Toward the end, we did more shoulder-in down the long side, and half-pass off the rail to the quarter line. Our first steps of half pass! We did this at trot and canter. Half pass to the quarter line, then go straight. I wanted to make sure T-Bone knew what he was doing was correct, so I didn't push it any more than that. He was such a good horse today, what an amazing work ethic he has.

The horse gets vaccinated tomorrow (Tuesday) so I won't ride him again until Thursday. I can't wait to work more on my own on this exercises. What's really awesome is that by increasing the level of difficulty, all of a sudden the easy stuff gets SO much easier. My homework from Jen was to work on the counter canter loops that appear in Second Level Test 1 as well. Counter canter is a little difficult, and he needs to be more supple for sure. But it'll get there.

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In other news, I'm going to need to find another form of exercise over the winter to keep myself in shape. Now that softball is ending, I won't have that extra hour or so of exercise. It really helped my riding and I'll definately miss it. Maybe yoga or pilates will be a good choice.