Indoor Magic

I took Allie to the indoor on Monday and I have to say, that horse blew me away!

I think we have our warm up down pat - it really works for her. We do two laps on the buckle in walk, trot and canter, with the only rule being she has to stay in front of my leg. Then, we pick up the reins and do various lateral stuff with a contact in both walk and trot (tried some canter leg yields yesterday too but she couldn't hold it, although she tried very hard). Then we have a short walk/neck break and then move onto working with a rock solid connection. We spend quite a bit of time on medium walk because it's her worst gait, we work on up and down transitions both within the trot/canter and between gaits. Up transitions are great now, but down I need to concentrate and ride her forward into the downwards transition otherwise she just stops the front end and the hind end keeps coming and flips all that weight on to front end and it is NOT pretty. I've started trying canter-walk transitions but we still need a stride or two of trot both up and down for now.

Our cool downs are generally stretchy trot and walk circles working mainly off the leg. She loves doing it.

But on Monday, her canter work was phenomenal. I ended up doing four loop sepentines up and down the arena with a simple change on the centerline each loop. Her simples just got better and better and she got more and more connected! There was a time not so long ago, when I had to "trick" her into a cabter transition while hiding it amount a bunch of trot-walk-trot transitions so she would sit on her hocks. Not so anymore! And the canter itself is starting to be adjustable. Ah man, she was a gem. We had a jump too but it's hard in the indoor because it's small and the sand is deep. She did well considering.

I couldn't ride Tuesday and I'm sick today and working tomorrow. Not ideal in the lead up to a hunter trial (on Easter Monday) but, you know, life. She can cope. I just wish I had gotten jumping this week over stuff a bit more like the 80cm we are going to be doing on Monday. Maybe I can sort something out on Friday.

Natalie had a ride once I was done so these photos are of her riding.