Let's March!

Got back out on the trails today for the first time since we had to stop for hunting season. It was nice to get off the farm and I think Kieran must've thought so too because he sure did do a lot of marching everywhere, LOL. We got in some nice little trots and one stretch of cantering too (so I got to practice my two point).

All in all, just a nice ride. :)

Getting some Air

I don't have anything I can make a free-jumping chute with here and the arena is too big (and grassy) to just free lunge him around like I used to do at my old barn (they had a smaller indoor ring), he'd just trot off to the other end and start grazing probably, LOL. Hence the lunge line in the picture.

CHECK OUT ALL THE PROGRESS (videospam)

So I guess...for comparison...this is us riding in a schooling show in May 2010:



Here's some videos from today:








Don't worry, the very first video is only actually about 2 minutes long for the meat of it, hah. And the last four are all really short.

Anyway, I see today some nice transitions; a relaxed, listening horse, and I think I'm a lot more still in the saddle too.

And here's some screencaps:




THIS TROT, OMG



There was a time I never would have imagined getting that out of him, LOL.


Hard work!

I'm so proud of him, I can't wait for our lesson tomorrow. :D

New Year's Day? Lesson! :)

Just a couple of short clips from today. The whole lesson was really a lot of hard work. We started by doing figure 8's in each half of the ring (so figure 8's on the top half, then figure 8's on the bottom half) at a trot. Which was harder than I thought, to really get the circles round and not make one small and the other big (i wanted to do a long diagonal between them instead of making them circles that happen to touch). After that, Jessica had use the whole ring to do canter figure 8s (with a few trot strides in the middle, we don't do flying changes yet!) and that was even harder because I really had to plan how I was going to make my canter turns and when to trot in the middle and ask for the other lead canter. That's our homework for the week.

Then she had us canter over some canter poles, down to the fence, come back to a (forward) trot and around over a crossrail with the idea that the canter poles would remind Kieran to pay attention to his feet (we don't keep cantering because she doesn't want us cantering into fences yet). That crossrail he doesn't really like though because it's pretty airy and bare (balanced on a couple of traffic cones, I can't wait until my jump blocks get here!) so he never puts in much effort over it. The other crossrail where we use barrels laying on the ground as "standards" he tends to actually jump (instead of trotting over and hanging his feet) because it looks more solid.

So then we had to canter around down to the barrel crossrail and all I was supposed to focus on was encouraging him forward (she stresses "allowing" and not pushing, because we can't make him think this is a fun thing to do) and just staying straight and getting out of his way when we go over.


That was one of the first times over the barrel jump. Then we had a couple of awkward tries and then we ended on this note:


Ignore Jessica's screaming, LOL.