Trust the Process

I ended up cancelling last week's lesson because of disgusting icy snow rain that started the night before and finished late morning with a base of ice under three inches of heavy, wet snow. Not my type of hauling weather, thanks. I'm waiting to hear back from DL now to see if we can change this week's as well because they're now projecting a "snow maker" on Friday. Thanks, weather. Save the best for the one day a week I want to trailer somewhere. 

So instead of lessoning, last Friday I did some jumping in the afternoon in preparation for the barn's jumper night. I thought Opie was going to be a monster for it because he was twitchy AF and spooking at the jumps as we walked by them, but I trotted him to a few 2'6" verticals in hopes it would keep getting rabid out of his mind. He was indeed super for those. I then sent him through a bounce that he wanted to go charging through as it was the first jumps I let him canter. Fortunately that worked out exactly the way I planned--the bounce itself slowed him down and made him look a fool for trying to blast through it, and we had zero rushing issues after that. 

Mentally, however, even though he was on point, I wasn't into it and decided to bow out of jumper night. That ended up working out because 50mph winds and random white out snow squalls moved in by the afternoon and it was postponed. Gotta love winter in New York. Today is 50* with bright sunshine and no wind to be found. 

Back to dressage world though!

I managed to snag Hubby for once yesterday afternoon and had him come take video of what our typical rides look like lately.

Warm up trot:

First sitting trot: 

Canter left:

Canter right:

More sitting trot:

Really right now my only focus is on myself/my position as this has been all my two lessons have been about. Doing my homework and all that. Are my wrists straight? Am I carrying my hands? Are my elbows my anchor points so my hands and wrists can be soft? Are my shoulders back? Am I sitting in the middle of the saddle instead of leaning right?

The answer to pretty much all of those is "no" LOL, but I am fucking trying!

I can tell the difference when I get it right. My seat is plugged in? The horse responds. My contact is even and not pulling? The horse responds. It's for a giant work in progress, but I know we're going down the right road in the long run.

This morning I had an awesome ride in the double where everything just felt very easy. I mean, I was working my lady balls off the whole time and my legs felt like rubber when I got off, but I felt like I was making good choices and Opie was there to play. 

The canter especially felt locked in, and we had the most awesome moment when I cut my turn wonky, but I plugged in my left seat bone (oh, hey, friend, there you are!), gave a half halt, and his shoulders came up about fifteen feet, and it was the most magical three strides on canter I have ever ridden. 

We finished up the real work with TOH where I thought half steps coming into it--aka get short, but keep the hind end marching, and dammit Opie, I want to feel a fucking difference!--which resulted in no crossing with the hind legs. He still wants to step wide behind, but getting rid of that crossover is such a big thing for us. 

He got tons of snackies when we were done and I could tell he was quite pleased with himself.