Rain and Shine

It was raining, so Jill rode in the arena. Her teacher'd been telling her (as well as the comments on every dressage test) that he needed to stay consistently on the bit. Every time Jill asked for a change, some kind of turn or transition he would bring his head up and hollow out...

So, she rode with draw lines and spurs and it really seemed to help. But, such hard work for him! She only rode for abot 40 minutes, til he was swinging and keeping it together through all the changes, without any tension on the draw lines.

What was still not working were the canter trot transitions, so she practiced a few more transitions canter walk and made a mental note to keep practicing those to improve the other...

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The next morning, she got up early and went on a nice hack - to celebrate the nice sumer day, even though she wanted to be careful about his footsies. They stayed off the trails becuase Jill had heard they'd put hard gravel down recently - so they just went out on the roads. He was mellow and responsive. They cantered along every grassy area she could find. When they got back to the barn, the turn out paddock for the mares and foals was empty, so they cantered around that both directions a couple times for the hill practice. She was asking him to move out and come back and he was a really good boy!
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ALL of Roomie's teachers pointed out how she had a tendency to let her hands get high while jumping, instead of keeping them low and moving them up the neck. It was something she would always need to practice...

In the most recent lesson they tried a neat trick of tying the reins in a knot to help keep them short and in front of her body. The horse got stronger and stronger (and flatter and flatter) the more they jumped, so they ended with a bounce exercise to keep him smart...


She said she voting NDP, and that she believed the biggest challenge facing society in the next 50 years was mental illness, specifically addiction, which she'd heard and admired the local candidate's views on.