Neither horse has gotten much face time with the double bridle for 2 days because of the 90+ temperatures we've been having. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you're unemployed), I've had to work the past 2 days, which means I can't ride early in the morning or late at night, when it's cool enough to actually do something. So the horses have sat, happy and impotent, in front of their fans.
I've been asking Nikita for increasing collection and carriage, and now her neck muscles are HUGE. She always had big neck muscles, but they're Schwarzenegger big now. Sounds like good training is starting to show. She's started to develop an even better show trot, more floaty like she doesn't touch the ground, using her new neck muscles to keep herself uphill (read: not putting 300lbs into the double, expecting me to keep her afloat).
This isn't to say we don't have our fair share of tantrums. Nikita likes to play in the half-passes now. I swear it's a different evasion every day with her. She'd rather avoid staying collected if possible, so she's punctuated nice, collected half-passes with sudden inverting and spinning exercises. Technically, this is my error for not keeping her through and pushing. But I'm only human, and she's only a horse. After a particularly heinous tantrum, she learned one of the unwritten Golden Rules of Dressage, which I don't use often enough: if you misbehave, you will have to just work harder. Several canter pirouettes ensued, both to illustrate my point and to let her blow off steam. Half-passes aren't our strongest movements right now, so I can imagine it's frustrating to her, too.
