August Week 2 Review

Monday 8/10
Rode for 30 minutes. Lots of walking and trotting - we pulled out a little bridge thing and it was a lot of fun to walk her over it, she was pretty suspicious but willing and got very confident as we continued to ride over it. At the end, I cantered her about one lap in each direction. Pretty uncoordinated, goodness! I just have to remind myself that her trot was like that when I started riding last week, and it should only take a few rides for her lovely canter to come back. I hope so. At any rate, her trot work continues to improve.

Tuesday 8/11
Mom got a lesson tonight so I did not end up riding. I am thinking about taking her to a clinic in Redmond with Brian Sabo in September. It's $100 more than the Inavale camp in September, but from a quick Google, he's pretty much amazing. A friend is going, so I'd have a ride and a buddy. Time to do a quick evaluation of the checking account, but I'm leaning towards yes.

Wednesday 8/12
I had a fantastic ride. I almost have my old girl back! W/t/c, almost 30 minutes all told. Her trot is steadily working its way toward the quality that it was before she went lame, although I can tell she's not in 100% perfect shape because she wants to lean on the forehand and because she seems to be slipping a lot in the hind end - dropping a hind leg here and there on turns smaller than 20m circle. If I put her together and make her work, the slippage goes away more.
Canter work is still fairly rough but a world better than on Monday. She felt like she actually remembered what to do when cantering with a rider up there! Still only did about a lap in each direction but it felt much better, and I got a few strides of her carrying herself without leeeeeeeaning on my hands. Good progress, and I'm pleased.

Thursday 8/13
Another ride. She was very good tonight. Canter much better - I hopped over one little cavaletto a couple times and she was definitely taking me forward to it just like the good girl I know.

Friday 8/14
Free-longed the girls. She got quite the workout, lots of cantering and galloping.

Saturday 8/15
Day off, I was in Seattle.

Sunday 8/16
Jumping lesson, it got moved a day earlier. By normal standards, it was pretty bad: really rushed a 6-stride ground pole line (though we did get one round of a quiet go-through), sorta blew through my hands to the base of every fence. But, it was her first jumping session in about two months, so I'll cut her some slack.
Instructor did show me that instead of sweeping my outside leg back to ask for a lead, which doesn't do much good, I should just turn the toe out and squeeze with the heel. Logically the aid doesn't quite make sense - shouldn't I push her off my inside leg too? - so I will explore it some more, but it worked 4 times in a row for landing on the left lead which she rarely if ever does. So, useful tidbit there.
Guess it's time to practice cantering ground poles again. We were good at it for awhile, and it's a good skill to have.
Need to practice my sitting trot. It was surprisingly good on Pandora considering I've never worked hard on riding her in sitting trot - instructor had me tighten my abs a little instead of allowing my lower back to swing loose, which I always thought you were supposed to do, but maybe I just need a happy medium. It seemed to work pretty well.