Carousel in the rain...

What a fantastic lesson! :) I'm getting it all written down now before I forget. Sadly, I could not convince my mom to take pictures but it's a good thing, since it ended up pouring rain the last 15min or so of the lesson.

We started off getting everything un-crooked at the walk, LENGTHENING my reins, and getting my hips straight. Which felt crooked. But they're really straight. Pro sighed a lot, which meant that he was exasperated with my bumbling incompetence, but pleased when I finally got it right. I need to remember to keep reins longer than I think so that he can unkink that long neck of his. He may look short, but he has quite the long neck. Once we got that, we worked on small circles and keeping my outside hand to the OUTSIDE instead of letting it be evil and try to cross his withers. After circling, we did small figure-eights at the walk and focused on me keeping my hands the SAME while his body changed underneath me to accept the new bend and the new outside rein. Eventually we had him chasing the bit at the walk, stretching down and lifting his back, and chewing.

Then we picked up our trot and started with the sameness routine - same stretch and up-back as the walk, same chew, same straightness ("bend") around the circle. Gayle is now weaning me off a new habit - compulsive giving with the inside rein. She's trying to get me used to the feeling of steady contact and letting him chase the bit on his own, instead of defaulting to continually helping him chase it. And to give the inside rein strategically - to give it whenever he pushes the energy back at me instead of pushing it forward, chasing the bit. It worked (haha, of course)! Especially feeling him so straight on the circle. Spiraling in by moving his shoulder to the inside, and spiraling out by pushing his inside hind leg toward the outside.

At 35 minutes into the lesson, Gayle announced that we had achieved dressage-worthy trot. :) So we played with it! We moved him down by the bunny tree, and focused on keeping him in that wonderful carousel sameness. With his back up, he would have to work pretty hard to suck back and invert (to spook), so if he started to think about looking, I just bumped him forward and gave the inside rein. I made it his safe place to be. And (finally, showing that he's FINALLY starting to trust me), he would retreat to his chasing-the-bit safe place. He felt so bold, so confident! It was like he was saying "HA! I'm a BRAVE pony!" to the bunny tree area. And we just trotted like that - forward and beautiful and balanced - for a good 15 min while it downpoured. He was so focused and so much fun. Gayle couldn't stop saying how damn CUTE he was. :) And he was!

Here's a video from last week's lesson...it was a lot rainier today, but it gives you an idea of how steady and rhythmic he's become. And this video has cantering!