Schooling at Merrist Wood 27-12-12

Monday - did a lunging session

Tue - good old leg stretch up the ranges - did about 7mins of cantering in total with one 4.5min canter which got rather fast and out of control - was too weak from hunting Llewi on Sunday to argue!  Considering we've still got a couple of months before eventing starts he is plenty fit enough already!

Wed - Boxing Day - shite weather - day off

Today - off to Merrist Wood to use the school.

Warmup in trot/canter

Then moved on to some walk-sitting trot-walk followed by some trot-halt-trot transitions on the centre line.  Also some trot-walk-halt to keep the back legs stepping under into halt.  Did some nice halts in front but always leaving a back leg behind.  Not overly bothered about that for now though - straight and square in front is good enough with one judge!  He was moving forwards into the trot quite nicely - occasional head toss but generally going straight into trot, forwards and straight so that was nice..

Did some LY and SI in sitting and rising trot and was really pleased given we hardly ever attempt lateral work due to shite school he did some really passable attempts.

Medium trot - hmmm,  Not as good as it was last week.  Need to work out what I was doing then to make it so good!  Definitely need to make sure he is straight before asking for medium and must must keep him round and connected.  Need to work more on the on and back in the trot to get this sorted.

Canter work - left rein - spiral in to small circle then leg yield out to large circle then move on into medium canter.  careful to keep him up in the medium, not let him bare down on hands and run onto forehand.  right rein - oh, so much tougher!  He really wants to swing quarters in and even more so as circle gets smaller.  When try to straighten him with shoulder in he really backs off.

Did some nice counter canter both reins.  Totally rubbish at G&R on the short diagonal though - that is not going to go well!  Nose poking all the way.  Can get it on a circle these days but not quite progressed to diagonals yet!

So, back up there again next Wed then it's test time on Thursday - should be erm, interesting - these 2 tests (N35/37) are a bit of a step up from prelims!