The past few days with Nikita have been about making her more elastic. I can tell that she needs some strengthening to become more truly elastic - right now, I'm having a hard time keeping her relaxed in collected-medium-collected transitions after just a couple transitions. After just a few transitions, she becomes either heavy in the bridle or tries to come above the bit, telling me that she's tired. We've been spending about 20 minutes every day on these transitions.
I've started to approach tempis different. I used to get wound up, worried about mistakes (laziness coming out, as I didn't want to have to do them twice). It was mostly a confidence thing, worried that I'd have to do the tempis again and again until I got them right. The other day an odd thing happened. I found I just didn't care if I messed them up, that I knew how to correct it, and could handle having to repeat the exercise. And of course, since I stopped caring about screwing up, I haven't screwed up, and have done them correctly the every time, up to 2 tempis. I've been working on making them more collected and expressive since.
I've had to play with different curb bit set-ups with Nicole. She isn't pushing to the bit enough, and simultaneously isn't through enough. When I make the curb chain tighter, she doesn't go forward enough, and when I make the curb chain looser, it's harder to get her through, which with Nicole is really, really important since she's so spooky, i.e., it's a safety thing. I'm playing with the placement of the bit now, but still haven't found that sweet spot.
