Dressage is this delicate balance between doing too much or too little. Too much leg, and you risk overwhelming the horse. Too little leg, and you're asking for trouble. In my case, too little work on the canter means I have to retrace steps to fix what's been lagging.As is par for the course, because I've focused on improving my trot with Nikita, the canter work has gone downhill faster than a fat man in a sled. Ok, that's hyperbole, but I've spent the past 2 days correcting a certain lack-of-throughness in our canter pirouettes, which up until now were one of our best movements. This is entirely my fault, as I assumed the pirouettes would stay just as perfect as they were. This just tells me that you can't focus on only the bad, rather, you have to make sure the good stuff stays good. There's a lot of plates in the air there, folks. At the same time, we're still able to get through the pirouette-change-pirouette movement in the Grand Prix, although it's not as smooth as it was before.
Now, I can remember a time when I could barely canter this horse, and it's memories like that which console me in these dark times. Yet it's still frustrating when just as one aspect of training is on track, another goes awry. One can only hope the overall level of the training rises anyway.
