National Cut In Front of Carly Day

What. The. FUCK. was with people careening in front of my poor little Saturn yesterday?! It's like every single person had it out for us! And when they got done cutting me off or blasting out of nowhere in front of me instead of waiting to pull out behind me where there were no cars, they proceeded to go ten miles under the speed limit. Of course. Really, Pennsylvania. Get it together.

aww, my little pig doggie.

I had a kick ass ride on Robert yesterday. We tooled around for about fifteen minutes at the walk and trot on a loose rein before I asked him to get to work. He was a little resistant at first, but he came along eventually. I could actually hear him de-suction his mouth when he relaxed his jaw.

We ran through three dressage tests, one after the other. BN A, BN B, and N A. I had my AP saddle on, but I wanted to give his back a little break anyway so I did all my canter work in half seat. He did every test really, really well--for him. There were a few issues: his canter was a little rushed, the downward canter transisions weren't super precise because of me being out of the saddle (they were more like half halt, slow, half halt, fast trot, fast trot, normal trot), and he got a little excited when he anticipated the second canter circle in every test. Unfortunately for him, the canter departs are at different spots in every test so he didn't guess right a single time.

However, his halts were spot on. He didn't do a single head-in-air fussy fit when I came back from walk to the trot. He was willing to move out with purpose every time I asked him to. Overall, he was just a much happier horse today. We didn't fight each other about a single thing and we both left the arena satisfied with our work.

He still needs to work on his canter, and he's not quite as connected as I'll want him to be for a real dressage test, but I finally feel like we're headed in the right direction again. I think he's going to be super happy and ready to make a big leap forward once he gets adjusted.