Ride Notes: Leaning Tower of Dopie

Tuesday

• Kept a constant check on his right lean. Now that I'm making a point to police it so I don't have to keep shelling out money for the chiro every few weeks for a problem I can do a lot towards fixing/preventing through my riding, it's been much easier to notice. Fortunately it's pretty easy to keep a lid on, too, once you're aware of what's going on. 
• Did lots of serpentines and circles in the sitting trot. Working a lot on just going around in that for both of us with show season for everyone on hold. He's getting more and more comfortable with it quicker and quicker.
• Ended with some walk lateral work which was really good--no crazy angle in that HI!

Wednesday

• Wanted to run through 2-2 in the outdoor but the footing was still frozen. Stuck in the indoor again. 
• The first canter we did in warm up was just plain gross. Stiff and locked up and crooked and gross. Then he started pulling on my right rein so we had a brief CTJ about that. I decided to say Fuck It and just go into the test.
• I should have looked at this test closer last year for a move up. It's a stupid test, but the double coefficients are in his strong suit (the walk, counter canter, and travers) and the things he finds hard (the fucking medium trot for one) are scored normally. But really. Who puts a medium trot up the center line??
• The run-through--the first one we've ever done in this test--was surprisingly quite alright. He had a couple jiggy spots in the walk where he anticipated a transition, but he did all the movements no fuss at all. 

Thursday

• Wanted to put in another dressage school, but Opie was distracted from the get-go. Gave up on the walk warm up because he wasn't really paying attention, but the trot was even worse. Again, just gross feeling. I've raised the bar to wanting round and forward and steady in my hand always. Anything less, even only a little less, is just not doing it for me. 
• Getting nowhere in the walk or trot, we picked up the canter and started circling on the right lead over a single vertical canted at a small angle just off the rail. The game was to maintain the canter I put him in all the way up to and over the jump. Any running or flinging his head and he got sat on his ass.
• He was all for this game, and only got a couple of quick, sharp corrections before he was metronome popping over it.
• Same to the left.
• The canter restored some of his dressage brain cells, and we finished with another round of just going around in sitting trot for the sake of both of us getting more comfortable with it.
• He wanted to test his new medium trot, so I let him power out into it whenever he wanted, but he got brought back as soon as he lost his balance. Never going fast, Dopie Horse. Only forward. 
• His shape was good and his back stayed soft despite there still being some teeth gnashing.

mostly quiet in the mouth lately, but still some chomping