Schooling 25-03-12

More of the same really.

He was less forwards today but still worked hard.  Followed the same plan as yesterday.  Had his bungee on so he couldn't do complete giraffe impressions - it has no effect at all if he's anywhere near a normal outline but just stops him giraffing.  We did all lateral work in walk to warm up - LY, SI, travers and HP then SI on a circle.

Followed that with a warmup trot and canter long and low feeling nice and soft.

Felt that his SI in trot on the L rein was better today - less curling up to the left, less bulging out through the outside shoulder.  R rein he still finds hideously hard though - reluctant to trot properly - not helped by the fact I find sitting trot so hard.

After doing it though we moved onto a bit of canter work and really got him boinging up and forwards.  Then we brought the canter right back then leg yielded out and moved it on again.  On the L rein he finds this so easy and can almost bring the canter back to a pirouette type of canter.  On the R rein he finds it so much harder.  We did a couple of walk to canters and canters to walk which weren't too bad although he does tend to nose dive in the canter to walk so still plenty to work on there.  Still, a yr ago there's no way he could do canter to walk so he is improving.

Did a little bit of counter canter on each rein as not done any for ages and he did it very well.  We did a figure of 8 pattern and he kept a nice rhythm and balance around the short side on both reins so didn't worry about doing any more of that.

Finished with some trot work in a comp outline doing figures of 8 to persuade him to change the bend nicely from left to right - have to start changing it earlier than the other way and also be insistent about him flexing to the new direction as he would rather resist but he is quite capable of doing it nicely.  Need to do lots of these as they make up a big chunk of marks in BE95.

Finished with super trot stretch on both reins.

Things to work on next session - more figures of 8, mustn't get stuck on a 20m circle in one direction.  He needs to do lots of changes of direction.  Also must re-install forwards.  He gets a bit dead to my leg with all the lateral work - gonna have to do a bit of waking him up.  We did one wake up aid today and he leapt off across the school in surprise.  So definitely needs a bit of waking up next session and working on straight and forwards in basic transitions or he gets too hung up on going sideways and forgets how to go forwards.