So today wasn't as earth shattering of a ride. Doh! Oh well. It was still a good ride with lots of good moments. We met Kelli at Ashland and she did his mane for the horse show. Yay! It's still wild and out of control but at least it may stand a chance of not being too feral.
Then we went to ride. I warmed up at the walk and then videoed her some. Then I went to work and she videoed us. I practiced keeping him with inside flexion to break up the base of his neck. And now that it's been pointed out to me, I can totally feel when he's locking me out. Dude!!! I'm on to you now though! But man, it's hard to manage that freight train when he gets rolling. We had an okay warm up and then I went down to the lower arena to do a test run through. He was AWFUL. Man, I hate the small arena so much. He just took over and freight trained the whole way. After we had run through it once Kelli mentioned that she wasn't sure this arena was opened. And... it was quite squishy! Ooops! Kelli had signed us in and originally had us in the jump arena. Lucy texted her and told her she could have the upper arena so we were riding in the upper. It didn't even dawn on me that it might be closed. Ooops! I did text Lucy an apology later. Apparently Adam had called Kelli asking if she knew who it was. And apparently they even put a cross rail in front of the entrance but because we just hacked down from the big arena, I didn't see it. I felt soooo bad. I hope I didn't mess the arena up. :( Kelli said Adam said we were fine.. they were just confused as to who so blatantly disregarded the rules. Me.. my dumb self. Doh. So... once she said that, we headed back up to the big arena and I practiced the test again in my make believe small arena lines. I had to do a moment of battle as he started taking over. So we ran through the test again and it was MUCH better. Not too shabby actually. Although when I look at the still shots... he's just... either on the forehand and strung out... or he's just not really reaching with his shoulders and hips. It's like he's either mincing along, on his hiney... or he's swinging but on his forehand. Ugh. And I'm still flopping around up there like a porn star. Ugh. But he did look softer in his neck in a good bit of it. So yay for that.
We played a tiny bit with the centerline as he was definitely taking over. Kelli suggested that instead of leg yielding him into the 10 meter turn, I almost counter flex him to square him up and then I can take him into flexion down centerline. It seemed to work pretty well, though depending on how long down centerline we went, I sometimes had to flip my flexion. But for the short turn, her plan worked better. We also did that same thing on my lengthen.. because I was doing a shoulder in on the rail before my lengthen but she said it was leaving his hind end out behind. He was not really into his lengthens today. We did get one really lofty good one but only one. The rest were more him just going slightly bigger and slightly faster :( Doh.
But we did have some good moments and heck... we're doing it! I think he'll do well at the show but maybe not as well as we could or as well as I'd like us to be doing. But we shall see.
Then we went on a short hack to the lake and back.
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