Ahhh.... a day off!!! Finally! Of course it's raining and icky out, but... at least it was only drizzling. I managed to sleep in a little... did the dishes and the laundry and ate breakfast. Then it was time to go ride. :) We headed to Rana's for a lesson. Luckily it was still only misting/drizzling when I got there so I was able to get tacked up quick and stay fairly dry before we got to the covered arena. :) We warmed up and did our turn on the forehand, turn on the haunches, leg yield at the walk, half pass at the walk, and then a little bit of trotting. Our half passes at the walk are stunning y'all!! Like.. he's got some serious cross over and maintains the bend. :) :) We just can't do them at the trot. Doh! Oh well. We are getting baby steps. So the... we decided to do a little bit of trotting and leg yielding. And of course, now with Rana watching, we fell apart. I actually had better leg yields to the right this time... which is usually not the case. I just couldn't get him fully into the left rein today. But then she had us do some leg yields on the rail. So, like... tracking right, then bend left and leg yield on the rail, still tracking right, but counter bent to the rail. She said this would be a great exercise for him, especially this direction, to help strengthen that weak left hind. Yep boss! Forgot about that one. So then we moved on to the cavaletti lead change exercise again. 
It was.. interesting. :) We started with our simple changes and Rana said they were better, but... he was still bracing a little. So she had me really overbend him in the downward so that he stayed soft and supple. Aha!!! It really did work! And his downwards got less abrupt too! Yay! And yes... it's not the end goal, but it's explaining the end goal to him and helping his body figure it out. We got some really nice transitions. :) So then we moved on to the cavaletti. Ha ha... Oh my! It all fell apart. Something about him and me (or maybe just me) panicking about getting the distance and not being able to jump it out of stride... it was awful! So we regrouped and tried again and it was better but... we still struggled. I was trying. He was trying. Interestingly enough, we could track right, supple right, then supple left, and jump and land left. (I say interestingly... because I could have sworn that he wants to always land on the right lead... vs the left!... like even in my jump lesson the other day we mostly landed on the right lead!). But when we tried to track left, supple left, then supple right... he'd invert and hollow and then the jump would be awful and we would land left still or land in one lead in front and another in the back... or we'd slice the jump at an angle. It was just bizarre. I could NOT figure out how to ride the line. I even "cheated" and changed the side I was jumping from... thinking maybe if I had more "time" on the approach...??? We managed to get it maybe 3 times total... of like.. 30! Ugh. Maybe not 30.. I'm not that mean... and we had breaks. ;) So... yep, that's some homework! BUT... we did have something super cool happen. In an effort to get him supple, I somehow actually managed to get him supple because... suddenly his back came up, his thoracic sling started working, and holy moly!!! It was like being on a beach ball!! My core was sore, but.... it was a lovely lovely feeling!! Super cool! And we did get a most perfect jump over with the lead change and he about jumped me out of the tack in a good way. :) So yeah... super cool :) This should help his jumping form too!
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