Stop being so peaceful

Hampton and I had a super lesson today. (It's been probably close to a month since we've had one). Here are some of the things we worked on:

• Bend. Bend. Bend. Going left it's easy, but going to the right he likes to make an "S" out of his body. Perhaps this is why I found renvers so easy a while back? lol! He will bulge his neck left, tilt his poll right and swing his haunches out. He can be tricky to straighten in this direction, but we worked it out for the most part.

• Canter transitions. While they have improved A LOT ... they still need work to nail the scores in dressage. We might get by at training level, but for first we will need better transitions. The issue is that he gets confused about how to strike off with his hind legs. Like, he sort of has to ponder it. So, we decided to can the trot-canter transitions for the most part, and start doing walk-canter. This will help him strike off with purpose, organize his feet and get his butt under him. I am so happy to say that we got a number of really super walk-canter transitions. Woot! A few were ... uh ... not great. And a few times he picked up the canter and then I stopped riding and then he broke back into trot. Derrrr. But doing those transitions made him really uphill and brought his poll up.

• Leg yields. He needs to be sharper and needs to cross his back legs better. He's got the concept now, so I need to start asking more. Which brings me to ...

• Stop being so peaceful. My instructor said that I like to ride in a very peaceful manner (this is true). This is good in that I create very sane, good-minded horses. They have confidence and don't turn into spazzes. However, there are times in training when you need to rock the boat. Or your progress isn't really going to happen. I need to ask more, jazz him up a little, ride him more like a 3rd level horse then letting him plod along.

So I've got some good homework for this week! I'm  not sure how much riding I'll get in since work is going to get in the way. UGH. Perhaps by the weekend.