3-1 Run-through

I've kept to my promise to myself and haven't gone back to the snaffle yet. It's been the double or a halter...although admittedly the halter got more use than the double last week (Only four more trail hours until we hit 100 tho!). 

Knowing it's going to get balls hot out the first couple days of this upcoming week, I wanted to log a couple of structured dressage rides in over the weekend. Yesterday was good. We didn't do anything too exciting, but I kept him coming forward in all the lateral work, he was steady in the connection, and I spent about five seconds playing with some half-assed, half complete changes before quitting there. Turns out I'm pretty gun shy about them now after how badly he fucked up my back the other week. I definitely want BM to get on for a ride and see what she can do with them, and I'll just have to live with her then expounding about how she put changes on my horse and fixed everything that was wrong with him for the rest of his life. 

Or maybe I don't want that, I dunno. Fucked up back and do it myself, or.... We'll see.

This morning I had Hubby come out because I was overdue for some video to check on progress. Thanks, Pivo, for not doing this for me, you useless fucker. 

It's always discouraging to see the things you think are going well looking a bit like shit, but on the flip side, the things I thought were absolute fucking trash didn't look so bad. EVEN IF THEY FELT LIKE IT.

So. A few things of note:

• If I want to warm him up on a long rein, fine, but he better be stretching into that long rein. Otherwise it's just me with floppy long reins, broken wrists, and my elbows behind my fat roll.
• But really. Why are my elbows always so far back?
• Probably because my reins are always too long.
• Probably because my horse is back to being inconsistent in the contact.

• We still have a medium trot. Will we ever get an extended trot?
• He can do lateral work while going forward. SO MAKE HIM.

Things were going pretty well--he was popping around on the contact a bit, but worked out of it--so I decided to finally run through 3-1 for the very first time ever.

Minus the flying changes. Because. 

Turns out this is a really easy test. If you have a change and a ballin' medium trot you can pass off as an extended trot (not us), you can sneak up to Third without much trouble. 

The turns on the haunches still sometimes want to sneak in as pivots, but sometimes not. We'll get the planted foot eradicated eventually. The half passes need some smoothing, but we don't work on those a ton--time to do that! 

And then the "extended" trot that turned into a giant tantrum at X. He was so sucked behind my leg the whole test, even though it doesn't look like it, that when I finally dug my spur into him to finish like a grown up, he was like, "FUCK FUCKING YOU." 

But it also comes back to the contact issues. Steady contact has always been Opie's number one bugaboo. The head wagging even on the buckle was a huge thing when I first restarted him. Also the tongue flopping out of his mouth like an angry fish (Still here--yay!). The bouncing on and off it. The whole shebang. He's been so good about it lately, that with it cropping up again now I wanted to write it off as a new problem. 

But I think we've just circled back around to: the work is getting harder again, he's learning new things, he's in a new bridle that I'm now asking him to carry all the time, and he's expected to step up to the plate for all these things.

Opie's life is hard, man.

While I got off a little frustrated with the finish, I still think we're on the right track. We just need to keep crawling along. I need to push my elbows forward and shorten my reins. Opie needs to get better about accepting the contact. 

And also maybe keep being abused by the changes. UGHHHH.

I am glad we ended up with an entire year to work through this stuff. I'm not so sure the winter alone would have been enough time to produce this horse to Third by next show season.