Making turns

This morning's lesson we talked about 'rollbacks'. In quotes because semi-unfit draft horse rollbacks just look like big turns to everybody else, LOL.

So Jessica used the jumps from the other day, but setup a couple more attached at the sides between the one in the center and the one stride on the right side at angles so we could go down a line and then come around over one of the middle jumps.

We spent the warmup doing lots of transitions and a few spiral circles to encourage Kieran to use his hind end more in preparation for the turns. I got a really nice canter out of him after we came out of one of the spirals and I just sat and asked for the canter. Just nice. He didn't really approve of all the transitions, though. I kept choosing meandering paths around the ring instead of just going on the fenceline and then asking for random transitions and he was totally like, "wait....what? this is now how warming up works lady!" :)

Anyway, a couple of pictures and a couple of videos.


Kind of a weird point. This was early on we went down the two stride to the arena fence, then turned and came back to this guy. (the fence all the way over on the other side of the lattice is the end of the two stride)

We had a little difficulty with this exercise, actually. We've made a habit, you know, of kind of cutting the corner after we come off a line like that so Kieran tried the first time or two to cut the corner and then I'm like NO NO WE HAVE TO GO BACK UP TO THAT FENCE WE WON'T MAKE IT LIKE THIS. So Jessica had us go over the two stride and keep cantering straight and halt at the arena fence a couple times until we got it down firm that he has to wait for me to tell him to turn, not just assume what we're going to do. So here's a video of one of those:


This was actually accidental, Jessica had the camera running while we were discussing what we'd been doing and what we'd be doing next. I just like how relaxed Kieran looks here.




Just a moment of one of the jumps, Yeah, his form is not quite as good as it was before our break, but I think mine has improved a bit. Mostly I just keep thinking about 'folding' and pushing my hands forward up his neck instead of throwing my whole body forward. I think it's paying off. :)



This was the last exercise of the ride. Basically we were riding a big circle with jumps in between. The last jump we came in a little weird but we kept a pretty good tempo going and there was no  knocking anything down or bowling over anything, LOL. So we'll call it a win.



Kieran got to be cooled out by walking around with one of the other boarders' moms. She had mentioned a while back how cool she thought he was and I'd told her if we were ever there at the same time and I was riding, she could hop on and have a pony ride. She doesn't ride much, herself, but she got up on Kieran like a trooper and took him for a nice walking mosey around the open spot in front of the barn. :)

Afterward, he got a good hosing down and put out his field with a treat. I've gotta say, I'm really impressed with how shiny he is considering he rarely, if ever, actually gets bathed. But man, he was pretty blinding in the sunlight, particularly wet, hah.

We've worked pretty hard this week so tomorrow we'll likely just take a nice walk out in the woods.