I know I'm going to shoot myself for saying this, as committing opinions to paper means they will be instantly rendered obsolete, but I think I've resolved a lot of the problems I'd been having trying to ride Nikita in the trot I need to make her through and to make the gait correct. It had been hit or miss, sometimes with a struggle at the beginning of the ride, but I dare say it's pretty solid now. Of course, now that I've committed this opinion to paper, I'm sure I'm going to have a terrible ride tomorrow. I'm told that we can try shoulder-ins and half-passes soon. I've done both on her, but wanted to wait until I could really make her through at the trot. Anyone can ride a half-pass, but it's doing it in the correct kind of trot and through that really matters.
The tempis are getting there. It's not that I can't do them, obviously I can, it's that I'm trying to do them through and with power so that the front end is freer and they're not flat.
One thing that's come to light is that I ride with my right elbow too far forward; this causes me to constantly lose my right rein, which causes the horse to lose her throughness. Correcting it feels weird though; it feels like my right rein and hand is way too tight, but I can tell by the horse's reaction that what I'm doing is correct. Oddly enough, I realized this issue when riding Nic.
