Fighting my demons

My poor horse.... Today we rode in the arena because I had to work and we ran out of time to go anywhere. And I wanted to do some dressage anyways, so perfect! We had to ride around the jumps, but that's okay. There was still room to do some. Maybe not test movements specifically, but... things. And Dan was good. He was trying. Mostly. We tried working on all the things.... straightness, impulsion, soundness...  I tried to get the better canter but keep it straight. But dang... it's hard to do those things! We attempted to do shoulder in at the walk to the canter... and then we attempted to do a 10 meter circle to a turn on the haunches to get the downward. And while we didn't accomplish any of those things... we did get better transitions. And we got a change... inadvertently...  Trying to keep him straight on the left lead canter and he swapped to the right. Sigh... well.... Ugh. This is going to be so hard. 

I tried super super hard to not get frustrated and let Dan feel my frustration. It's not his fault I'm type A and feel like I've been fighting this stupid battle for 4 freaking years... I tried my best to reward him when he was trying and reward him when he gave me the right answers. And I even gave myself a few "good girls" when I got it right. Because, let's be honest... it's usually my fault when it goes wrong. Or always my fault. But, I still felt defeated at the end of the ride. 

I did use my pivo and it lost me a lot because of the extra umps in the ring and the sun setting, but... I did get some pictures and... maybe it wasn't such a terrible ride after all. We had some good moments. :) Now I've just got to figure out how to make goals and try to make progress and realize that it isn't going to happen instantaneously and not put too much pressure on myself or my horse.... or just give up and just go trail ride and not ruin my relationship with my horse. Sigh...