He has totally cracked leg yield in trot and is lengthening and shortening in trot really well. His trot/walk and canter/trot transitions, which I was struggling with earlier this year, are much improved. His canter right has improved a huge amount but today he was a bit stilted on canter left. He gets very frustrated if you repeat an exercise that he is getting wrong, so I change things a bit to try a different approach. I took him off the track and stopped doing the transition in the corners, and put him on a circle where we could take the transition anywhere on the circle instead of having to be at one particular place. That reduced the pressure on him, and he got better transitions and did then free himself up for a better canter. We always finish on free walk on a long rein, which is turning into a bit of a speciality of his, because he always stretches his neck down to take the full length of the rein with his nose near the floor. I am teaching him to push it out a bit as well, and then our 7 for the walk should go to an 8 or even a 9 because he has a great overtrack.
He thought he was finished then, and was unimpressed that I attempted to turn him into a sheep pony and herd two stray sheep off my field! It didn't matter, they weren't going to go where I wanted them to anyway.
Some pictures from our first canter transition from Wednesday :-))))) The rest of the test was good!
Tucker has a short back like Ace. Now, he is not half the mover Ace is, but he surely can buck. When I got him, my trainer told me Tuck would use bucking as one of his prime evasions. Interesting. Wonder if being built like that encourages the bucks?
ReplyDeleteOnce again, I do have to admire your seat. Hope you got good scores on position and use of the aids. (They do score that as a separate mark here in the US.) *lol*
Funny how we relish the pictures of the bad moments nearly as much as the good ones. These are definitely something you will treasure when Ace is a solid Grand Prix horse with impeccable manners. *S*
Interesting about his liking the blanket. Wonder if the extra warmth gives him a sense of security too? Maybe it's kind of like a baby in swaddling.
Pictures are hilarious. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteJean I am convinced that it goes with a short back. Zippy's evasion was to buck and I have seen friends' short backed horses buck to evade. None of my longer backed horses have ever done it.
ReplyDeleteThe blanket does appear to be just that a "Linus blanket". It's really quite sweet the way it comforts him :-)
ER I feel a bit guilty showing pix of him behaving so badly when it was 2 or 3 seconds out of 5 minutes, but it gives me a giggle to look at them :-)
C
So where are the good photos????
ReplyDeletewhat was the potential new trainer like? I'm really happy with my two trainers currently, (one classical German dressage, one jumping) and it makes such a difference.
xx T
The good ones are the same as last time Tracey :-)
ReplyDeleteC