Schooling Ride from 7/14/2011

Just a little video update!  Thanks to my girl Robyn for videoing that day!  Nothing fancy, just a little bit of schooling in the paddock to keep her worked while her trainer was away at the beach!!!  I am amazed at how light she is becoming.  She has such a delicate contact now, instead of laying on your hands or trying to duck behind the contact.  Her headtossing is virtually a thing of the past, and we are moving forward little by little! 

I had a lesson with Kelsey last night, too.  She pushes us, just a little at a time, and it is the best thing for me.  She takes me just enough outside of my comfort zone to stretch me, but not enough to scare me.  We schooled in a big open field, with no boundaries but the ones I enforced.  And we finished up by schooling over fences at the end!  We had an awesome, productive lesson.  She worked with me on transferring the principles I use to create the "stretchy trot", as she calls it, into a collected trot.  We can have a beautiful, relaxed trot, with zero contact, and 100% steering with my seat and leg...but when I go to collect her upwards, I revert back to old habits of being tense, holding too much on the inside rein, and it all falls apart.  We drilled our transitions as well - walk, trot, walk, trot...downward transitions are pretty simple for me, but we are working hard to eliminate the first hollow stride from walk to trot, and instead get a smooth, collected upward transition.