More grinding

Last week was a light week for both blog fodder and actual riding as once again that four letter word... camp. Pardon me as I dig my nails into my eyeballs.

Fortunately I have this week free to get ready for my last scheduled dressage show on Sunday before another (and the last!) week of camp. And that camp is advanced camp which is full of the teenagers that are often lurking about the barn so I can work around them without issue. Hopefully.

might involve riding in the far reaches of outside

I did finally get sick of running out of there as fast as possible once I was done with the barn and made myself get on the horse a few times. I didn't really want to give him another full week off as I originally planned on pushing for a First debut in short order, but now I'm undecided about that. I have about ten different game plans for the next few weeks to wrap up the season and none of them are similar.

But we'll cross that blogging bridge when we come to it!

He got Monday and Tuesday off. On Wednesday we put in a solid bareback trail ride all around the adjoining properties to chisel away at my 25 hour TIP goal. Thursday and Friday I finally put the saddle back on.

i forgot how much easier it is to post in a jump saddle.

Unfortunately for our dear Dopie Horse--and myself--I'm still on my never-ending Improve the Canter mission. On Thursday that meant a lot of trot work. I stuck us on a roughly 20m circle in the middle of the ring framed by a few jumps. We made the circle square. We made the circle round. Sometimes is was 20m, sometimes it was 15 or 10m. Sometimes it was a big trot, sometimes a little trot. But for fuck's sake one thing always remained the same: the shoulders had to stay upright and straight.

Once I finally moved on to the canter, I had a most excellent right lead canter underneath me. The left lead was full of evasions--fake spooking, bolting, breaking, falling--until he'd tried them all and not one got him what he wanted. And then we magically could canter perfectly acceptable that direction as well.

to be fair, this little horse has a giant fucking canter. it's hard to balance letting him
move out while fighting the urge to choke him back so he doesn't careen around our
narrow indoor. it will come as the balance and strength improves.

On Friday I started off playing around a bit more with the trot lengthenings. They're not giant like Bobby's were, but I'm also trying to get them correct from the start so it's slow going. This whole correct basics thing is such a drag, you guys. Not as much of a drag of having to go back an fix everything though!

Then we moved on to the canter lengthenings which is where it turns out test movements just might be set up to help you. Color me surprised.

I started off just relaxing my aids as we came down the long side and letting Opie naturally move out. As a measure of how far he's come, he did just that instead of dying as he would have done over the winter...and this spring....and earlier this summer. Only then we started nearing the end of the long side and I couldn't bring him back. He'd either not come back at all or break to the trot. (Or Angry Cobra flail into the ground on the left lead.)

So I added in the 15m circle at the end of the lengthening in 1-1 and suddenly his little brain and his little feets had something to focus on. Lengthening unlocked, coming back from the lengthening also unlocked.

zoomgofast!

He got Saturday off since those two days of work were hard, both mentally and physically. Then he got thrown into the deep end on Sunday which is where all these pictures came from, but that's tomorrow's post.

lots of pats for a hard working midget