March 10, 2009

I've gotten in trouble for using the curb too much to make Nic through at the walk, so I've been relegated to snaffle-only status at the walk presently. Nic is like a freight train when she wants to be, so it took me a few minutes to get her through enough at the walk to keep her mind on the work and off of the 6 month old filly she's adopted. When we started trotting though, it was easier to keep her light and through at the trot.

I think I also messed up by asking for collected canter. Now she isn't quite as through at the canter as she was before, but honestly, I don't know if that was because of the collected canter, or if it's just one of those minor setbacks that happens.

Note to self: When you feel something in your hand, that means the horse isn't through. True throughness is defined by an absolute lightness in the hand.

March 7, 2009

I'm starting to get a couple steps of collected canter. Nic's better able to hold it to the right, but to the left, it's still pretty spotty. She can even do a couple steps of working pirouette to the right, but I'm not even going to attempt it to the left. She isn't in enough self-carriage to the left to worry about working pirouettes.

Flying changes, blech. She's doing them okay, I guess normal. Normal meaning she understands the concept, and can do them around the arena, but gets stressed easily about them still. So she misses about every other one because she loses throughness.

I'm thinking about putting her back on Adequan because I think some of the stress is normal learning-the-lead-changes stress, but I think there's a layer of geez-I'm-coming-14-what-do-you-want-from-me stress. I think Adequan works, but I will have to try it again to see if it will do anything for the mare.