Well, Pro was excellent tonight. I don't know if it's because of his 2 day break or because he didn't have to see me till after he'd finished his dinner, but he was very cooperative.
Since he'd been stuck in his stall for most of the last two days I really just wanted to get him moving around and forward so Kate wouldn't have to deal with soreness in her lesson tomorrow. I told her before I went out that my goals were "Forward" and then "Supple" and anything else would be bonus. So after snuffling the bench we started off at a nice, forward, marching walk. He was actually nice and loose in his shoulders from the get-go, perhaps because of the freed up inside rein. We marched around the ring and used some cones that had been set up to do a little shallow serpentine followed by a rectangle with 1/4 pirouettes at each of the corners. Once he'd gone around a couple of times I switched from shallow serpentines to leg yielding between the cones. I was aiming to send him over while keeping the forward, bump him once with the outside leg to halt the lateral movement, then bump him again to send him off in the other direction. It mostly worked, he lost some forward but went laterally willingly enough. He was good at the trot as well, though at the trot I had to do a leg yield, go forward one gap, then go over, I couldn't get him reorganized fast enough to bounce him back and forth. We broke it up some by practicing on the rail with both shallow serpentines and leg yields.
For our grand finale we did a couple canter circles. He was AMAZING. You know that canter where you're like "oh, I bet this is what it needs to feel like to do tempi's!"? That's what he felt like. He was balanced, on the outside aids, no tipping in, no counter-bending... just... straight! Big Horse's owner was out and saw our canter and commented that it looked very soft and willing and just generally good. Since he was so amazing I didn't want to risk it falling apart in the other direction so we stopped there ;). In general I think the best word to describe him tonight was "happy" and apparently a happy Pro is a soft, willing Pro.
Now, since I've gushed about him being good I'm sure he'll be a snot tomorrow for Kate :(.
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6 comments:
Oh wow...we'd banned "good luck with the weather" or "have a good ride" between each other because they were jinxing factors. You pretty much killed my chances for a good lesson tomorrow with a whole post about his greatness. ;)
But I'm so filled with wonderful, motherly pride that I don't even care right now!!! YAY PRO!!! Wow, and I'm surprised Big Horse's owner would say that...that's REALLY a testament to how good he must've been.
I'm just mad you didn't get pictures. :)
wow, it sounds like he was amazing tonight!!
Sounds like a great ride! Well done!
Kate, I debated just not telling you (or saying he was an idiot) but that didn't seem fair to him. I'm hoping that saying he was going to be awful undid the jinx.
We really need to find out who's giving him internet access and stop it.
Awesome! I'm glad to hear you had such a good ride!
sounds like a great ride...one of those where you get off and say "wow! that's what it's supposed to be like!"
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