Riding with Liz

Today I met Liz and we went for a hack. Dan was a little up so we did a few "suicide sprints" up the big hill before we headed out. He was still a little naughty but not too bad. I made him trot behind Forrest some and he ended up just bucking and cantering. But he would happily trot in front and behave. Goober. We decided that my best bet was to find a horse, like Beau and Jeff, and just let them trot in the front and keep trotting until Dan settled and trotted rather than carried on in the canter. We decided that it would take a horse like Beau to make that happen as it could easily take 20 minutes or more. And Beau didn't seem like he would care about the antics. 

 

We then happened to be in the field behind halfshire so we did some side by side trotting. They were good and Dan was fine even when I let Forrest get a little ahead. Then we happened to come across Jeff and Beau. So... I saw that he was taking another canter lap so I asked to canter behind him. (Although it's not really cantering that is the problem, but... ) So Beau went off in a canter and Dan loped along behind, like a school horse. Around the first bend though he suddenly picked it up a gear and covered some ground quick. I managed to keep him behind and got him to turn off the after burners, so it was a good thing. 

But I really need to meet them some time for a planned trotting trail ride. Maybe after already doing some dressage work. So he's more likely to settle sooner rather than later. ;) 

Then we headed back to the ring to play for just a little bit. I had the dressage saddle on so I wouldn't be tempted to jump so we did some flat work. Liz helped me with it and said that I needed to slow him down. She said that he was throwing me to the left (inside) and that I should over flex him and then shift my weight to the outside stirrup to sort of throw him into the outside rein and then regather him. I tried... and I couldn't quite make it happen. But when I did haunches in right, it seemed to help and made it a bit easier to get him into my outside rein. She also mentioned that he needed to be slower to get more push, rather than rushing him off his feet. So we played with that. And we got some nice work. 
 
Then we watched her and Forrest play and then she let me hop on him. Dang.. he's like a sportscar! So quick and hot off the leg. Almost too much so. But I definitely need to get Dan more reactive to my leg. But Forrest was fun and we had fun jumping a few fences. 

Then I started to get a migraine and wanted to hop on Fleck too and it was getting late so we finished our ride.