Cheat Ride!!!

Whoo hooo!!! I got to ride today. :) I had one client cancel mid day and figured I'd go to lunch or the bank. But then I finished a little early with my other patient and then the one after my break said she couldn't make it, so... free pass!!! And it was such a pretty day, I figured I'd earned it. It was supposed to get icky cold and potentially sleety this weekend. And I have to work this Thursday all day again, so.. yep. I felt quite justified in going to ride today. 

At the end of my ride yesterday Kelli was trying to help me figure out my leg position. I realized I had gotten a little braced and driving and behind the vertical in my position in an attempt to fix my seat or get Danny going or something. And then I was pinching with my knees and my legs were pulling up. And a whole bunch of things I didn't want. So anyways, she suggested that I "breathe" my legs and drop my stirrup a hole. Breathing my legs means that you basically pull your leg laterally away from the saddle. It is hard.. and it makes my hips burn!! I'm still struggling with turning my toes in to keep me from just gouging Dan with my spur but not immediately tightening up in my hips. So anyways, she dropped my stirrups a hole and told me to sit a bit more on my "triangle" and not so much on my pockets. And... it actually seemed to really help! So... I was anxious to try it out for real today. 

So we did more dressage. Poor Dan.. he's got to do his lesson with Cindy tomorrow too! But anyways, it really did seem to help. I still need to work hard on it but it does seem to be a bit easier with the slightly longer stirrups. And maybe it was my imagination, or related to two days in a row, but he did feel better!! 


We warmed up and I made sure we had forward at the walk. We did turn on the forehand, turn on the haunches, and shoulder in and shoulder fore. Then we started trotting and cantering. We practiced some of the 2nd level tests. We got some nice leg yields too. But we did shoulder in to 10 meter figure 8 to haunches in, and then we did some of the canter work. Our walk to canters are getting better and we got our lead most of the time today. We still get inverted but it's getting better. And then we worked on the canter serpentines. It was still hard and he broke a few times, but he didn't struggle as much. And we even managed to get it a few times without breaking and while staying fairly straight in his shoulder! Whoo hoo. We tried to do the simple changes and we can do pretty well if we stay on a circle and do same lead to same lead. Trying to do one lead to walk to the other is much much harder. We also worked on our lengthens (mediums now) and ugh.. those are not great. Especially having to sit. 

So yeah.. definltely a LOT to work on before the shows. I'm definitely NOT prepared to be showing 2-1 and 2-3 at Silverthorn in 2 weeks, but... I figured it would be my only chance at a schooling show. And I'm not using it for points, but just to see where we're at and how he handles it. And then we can prep til February. Ugh.. hopefully we'll be ready. That's not that far away!

So yep, he was super today and then we went for a short hack. :)