In past few lessons I have realized how important speed control and the frame is. Even more important than working on the excersises.
Everything comes down to speed control. Wether you can move forward or slow down at the drop of a hat. If your horse is really on your aids then your excersises come naturally.
This is all I have been working on with Vitall. I’m trying to keep him forward and on my aids and working on being able to bring him up or down or to shorten and lengthen the frame. The tricky thing with Vitall is when I bring him up into competion frame he wants to get slower. So, in the show frame, I’ve been working on keeping my tempo quick and shortening him and letting him out again. What I mean by shortening and lengthening the frame is bringing his nose in slightly and taking a bit more contact and then lengthening by letting him out into self carriage.
Once these transitions are easy then I go ahead and work on elements of the test. By then, all the movements feel effortless because he is so on my aids. The past few days I have really gotten the feeling of “sit and enjoy life,” as Anky says.
Another thing is that I have learned to improve my half passes by riding straight and just getting inside bend. Sounds simple…. I thought so myself the first time I heard Anky tell me to ride straight with bend. However, it took me a few long sides to actually get it. But once I got it, half passes had perfect bend because I had the flexion I needed, Then all I had to do was put my outside leg back and move him over.
The weekend went by quickly. Sunday was Vitall’s day off and he only gets lunged and I let him leap around which he loves. I also let him have a roll in the sand and get all his itches out. Afterwards he was so dirty I decided to give him a good scrub. While I was at it, Oslo got a good scrub as well so I had two clean kids.
Summer is going to be warm here. We got a taste of it on the weekend when it was about 23 and we were all roasting. Oslo went for a run then flopped down panting
Anky is gone for the next few days so I will work Vitall lightly and pick up again on Thursday.
