Well alrighty then!

 Alright Monkey!!! Way to bring it! 

 

I am running out of time to ride all the ponies these days... it's too cold to start early and then life gets in the way and then... then... then... So I managed to get Lyric ridden at Ashland and we had a lovely time. I got home and turned her out and grabbed Funny, who was luckily right by the gate. We got tacked up and headed to the arena. It was looking like we might get rained on! But we didn't. 

 

We hacked up there and did some walk warm up. We did shoulder in and haunches in and she's kind of getting the hang of it! Then we picked up the trot and she almost immediately went into a nice soft trot! In fact, the majority of our ride was a pretty decent tempo. She got a little quick a few times but nothing like she used to. And although she didn't get quite as "collected" as in our lesson.. mostly because I didn't insist... she spent a good chunk of the ride in a very nice lovely tempo and balance. She wasn't sitting behind as much as in our lesson, but she was sitting more than usual. It was a lovely ride! Even after we cantered. We had some really nice moments and overall, it's trending towards more good than bad! We're certainly getting more than just "moments" of good now. Yay!!! We even got some really nice canter work today. And she's letting me sit in the saddle instead of trying to get me to perch. We also did some nice trot shoulder ins at the sitting trot. And we had some good transitions within the gait at the trot. All off my seat and thighs. And we had some good canter to trot to canter transitions. We picked up the canter from the smaller trot and it helped. We did some 15 meter canter circles too. 

 

In fact, she was so good we quit pretty early on. It was still a 40 minute ride but that included the hack to the arena and back and our walk breaks, so... not as much "work" as we usually do. But honestly, she was so good that I didn't want to push for more and get into a fight or punish her try. Or have her get tired or fatigued and start to speed up again. So we didn't. We hacked back home. 

 

Good pony!!! I wonder if it's just me being a better rider (using my seat more instead of my hands), maturity as she's gotten older, or the saddle fitting her better?? Or all of the above most likely. Regardless, YAY!