Dressage Practice

Now that Calvin's very good at stretching down and has a pretty solid topline, we've started focusing our work onto straightness and transitions. I've mentioned before how he likes to bulge left, which is very problematic when your leg is about to be crushed into the railing when traveling to the right. It's funny, because I'm starting to notice bad habits I do that don't help him out. For example, I lean a bit to the left when tracking left, which causes him to dive in the corners. If I sit up straight and tall, he's much more balanced.

A little too good at stretching down sometimes!

I've been trying hard with his trot to canter transition. I always teach horses to canter from a walk, that way they don't take 50 trot steps and finally canter, they just jump right into it. He'd never learned to canter from a trot, so it was basically trot faster until he eventually cantered and I'd praise him. Now that he knows that he can canter from the trot, I'm trying to smooth it out. Instead of continuing to trot faster and faster, I'm asking him to pick up the canter right away from a medium trot. Again, I notice in myself that the reason he's rushing into the canter is because I was impatient. If I act as though picking up the canter is no big deal, then he will think the same thing. It takes lots of practice, but the goal of course is to have it be effortless like the horse in the video.

Since he's my first horse I've trained from scratch, it's pretty cool to think everything he knows in terms of riding is because of what I've taught him. I don't need spurs, he goes in a soft rubber bit or a french link snaffle, and he's traveling long-and-low without the use of draw reins or tie downs. It's a slower process, and I have no doubt that if I rode 4x/week then he'd be further along, but life gets in the way :)

Aren't we cute? <3