Not in love....

Ugh! Saddle shopping is frustrating!!! I'm glad I didn't let myself fall in love with this saddle. It fits Andy great but not me. Its not something I can put my finger on either.....

The stirrups don't even out just right.

The leather isnt' super smooth so I feel like I stick.

The fenders are long and scratch the back of my heel.

I could go on and on but I know that I'm going to hate it. I will ride in it again tonight if I get time and the rain holds off to try it again but I'm pretty sure its not the saddle for me.

Thankfully I'm going to Asheville this weekend and so I will be able to shop at Jackson's. I will have to take pictures to show you the sheer number of saddles he has....its AWESOME. I plan on taking mine and hopefully getting a good trade out of the deal.

I know you guys ride english but what I'm looking for is a 16" Semi-QH bars cutting saddle.

Wish me some saddle luck this weekend......

Skate's Ulcer Free!

From what we could tell - even though we withheld food and water, he had a whole bunch of foam in his gut. Not only did he have foam, he had some pretty bot larvae. Gross. I'd include a pic of Skate's friends, but it might gross someone out. The actual scoping was really cool...his esophagus is really clean and pretty and his stomach looked great, too, minus the friends. (Alright, pic added - as requested!)

I decided to have him scoped since he seemed to respond so well to the Ulcerguard and had started eating hay and being a saint undersaddle. I guess its even better that he's been so good lately and he's ulcer free - I was beginning to worry about how I was going to handle dealing with an ulcer prone horse for the rest of his life!

So, I guess the mystery continues as to why he'd been such a cranky pony for the past month or so...but like I told the vet, as long as he stays his happy go lucky self that he's been this last week, I'm happy!

So, hopefully I'll have some good updates of our progress if his good attitude sticks around. On that note - I got a pretty darn good leg yield all the way across the arena yesterday. I was VERY proud.

You asked for it!

Pushing the limits (or not)

Double update. Sun and tonight went pretty similar though, so I won't make it super long.

Getting Pro between my aides is getting faster every time. He's not leaning on my inside leg nearly as much and he's pretty darn responsive off my outside leg. Which means the limiting factors now are me using my seat to keep him from walking laterally and then pushing his energy forward in front of me. I have a hard time keeping my seat from allowing him to move laterally. The idea of walking my seat bones forward makes sense, but I feel like that's not encompassing everything. Tonight I tried to make sure that my hips were only sliding forward and back, not diagonal across the saddle. I think that might be the missing piece, but mostly because that made it feel like guys would have an advantage in how their hips are built.

Both nights I started pushing him in front of me and then had to take a brief break which threw me and Pro off. Sunday I had to answer a question and tonight some geese were splashing behind the tree as we walked by it. He got his mind right back to business, but it interrupted the flow. Tonight we got things going pretty well and once the trot was balanced I even tried some canter. He was pretty balanced, but not super collected. Still, balanced is a big improvement for him. The highlight of the night was while we were cantering and I realized I was squeezing him just a smidge so I pulled my legs off that extra bit and he POOFED up under me and felt awesome. I can't wait to see what Kate works on this week in her lesson, because I think Pro is really starting to enjoy being between the aids.

New Saddle

Saturday after the funeral and the trailer loading I headed to Ernie's to see if he had a saddle a little more narrow to fit Andy. I must have sat in 10 saddles before coming home with a Simco. I got lucky and got to go through the saddles he hasn't repaired yet and got a $25 colt starting saddle that needs stirrups and a girth and that's it! I'm lucky, I can actually safely ride in that one. I don't have pictures of it yet but I'm sure you will see it on a baby sometime soon.

A good friend of mine that has had some bad luck with horses came out to watch me ride. I convinced her to get on Andy and while I don't have pictures it was beautiful. She is a nervous rider but was leaving me to jog around the arena on him and feeling safe. We talked and she is going to start shopping for a horse similar to him. I already posted on NCHN but if any of you know of a well broke, sane, responsive gelding for sale please let me know.

I think I really like this saddle but will give it a week before falling in love. It might be 2 weeks if this dern rain doesn't stop!!

The Yearling

This was not a movie about a baby deer....trust me. That monster in the picture that is contemplating running me over is exactly 13 months old!!! He is Fresian and QH. Not in the yukky backyard breeder kind of way though. His dam is a QH known for producing really nice crosses and he has been sold to a dressage home. In order to get to his new home he needs to be able to load....this is where I come in.

I wish I had more pictures but his owner was taking them while trying to watch and pay attention.

We started out like the picture above...me trying to get him to step forward and stay that way. Then we would walk by the trailer and if he was calm we would walk away. If he got upset or pushy then we would stay there and work until he understood to be quiet and follow my energy.

Trailer loading is like building a house, you can just start throwing the roof on if you don't have walls, no walls without floor, etc. So then we decided to LOOK at the trailer while staying quiet.


Then we went through what I call the 3 stages of resistance.

#1. Pfft watch this. If I get upset then they will get scared and not make me.
#2. NO WAY! She didn't get scared. I DONT WANT TO!!!

#3. Acceptance with hesitation but finally starting to follow the quiet energy and being still in their core.


Then we loaded all in and out about 20 times. The owner did it and so did her boyfriend. It was a great day. From when I got his leadrope to when he had all 4 feet in the trailer was maybe 15 minutes.

Another good lesson!

I finally got my first lesson since the fall today! Pro didn't let me down (and I only let him down a little bit ;)).

We worked on the same stuff Kate's been doing in her lessons, but Kate's mini-lessons during our tag-teaming two weeks ago really paid off as I didn't have to start totally from scratch. When his head went up at the beginning of the lesson I just kept my hands in position and we worked on fixing it with my seat. Gayle explained that when he inverts he does a lateral walk. The way to fix this is evidently to not let my seat follow the lateral walk, but rather to use them properly. So I worked on not letting my seat bones follow the motion back behind me, but rather slide forward under me. It's a hard thing to describe, but visually it's sort of like instead of letting the horse's hind legs trail out behind him, I'm stopping them in line with his butt so he can't be so strung out (Kate, correct me if I'm wrong about this). So then we had him semi-marching forward and a little less inverted.

The next step was to get him between the aids. We did small circles off the outside aides first to establish those, and then once that was done we worked on getting him off my inside leg. Gayle said that I should still use the inside rein to keep him from pointing his head out (thank GOD, that was killing me ;)). There are times when he's trying to get me to pull that I'm supposed to soften, but I don't have to throw it away entirely. We started out with some pretty unsubtle aides and he fairly rapidly gave me a decent walk, but then I worked on pushing him further in front of me with my seat. So he'd round up and walk nicely and I was supposed to say "Thank you, now give me more" until he was REALLY stepping out in front of me. Gayle said one thing that I found especially useful with Pro's wormy-ness and said that I should feel like he's equally in front of me on both sides. If he was less in front of me on the outside then I either needed to move my outside aides back some or fix the fact that he was leaning on my inside leg.

The rest of the lesson was basically tweaking things and working to improve from where we were at, with the aim of very subtle cues and getting him comfortable with his work. At the trot we did a little bit to try to get him comfortable with being more up against the bit by not giving when he'd tweak his head asking me to follow him. My hands aren't the steadiest at the trot so Gayle, Pro, and I were ok with not asking him to go up against my hands too much. Gayle said that he's not at the point quite yet where he's comfortable with fixed hands anyway, so hopefully I can fix myself before he needs them to progress.

He was a VERY good pony though and very forgiving. At one point we were trotting around and he was strutting his stuff and I saw a deer fly on him up near his ears. Without really thinking about it I reached up and whacked him on the neck to try to get it for him. It made a really loud slap sound (and I missed the stupid fly anyway) and apparently Pro's expression was hilarious. But after a couple softer pats and apologies he just sort of shrugged and went back to work. He really does have a great work ethic!

Kate is going to edit in more pictures to show the progression from weird inverted-camel Pro to Hot-Stuff Pro, but here's the one I've got so far! I get two more days of riding this weekend while Kate's being a wild-child, so I'm hoping I can really solidfy the concepts from the lesson.

**Edited - I added more pictures! :) -Kate

Skate - The Mystery Continues

So, I had the vet pull bloodwork to check his metabolic levels...his odd behavior, etc has us puzzled. The list of oddness - not shedding out like the other horses (he is determined to keep his flanks and butt warm, apparently), not eating hay at all (used to hoover like other horses), drooling after eating, coughing at times after/while eating, not putting on weight even though he's getting a good deal of food and tons of spring grass, and just generally cranky and upset under saddle. My theory is ulcers, but I wanted to make sure he's not deficient in something or showing signs of having eaten something toxic.

Anyway, the results showed his metabolic levels to be ok - no deficiencies. But, he's got elevated muscle enzymes. Odd. The vet has no clue what that means other than he may have eaten something funky in the pasture. He's never shown signs of tying up or anything. We're going to recheck in 3 weeks to see if they've gone down. In the meantime, he's getting a maintenance dose of Ulcerguard for 8 days to see if he'll start eating hay and/or settle down undersaddle.

I rode for the first time in a week last night. Of course, he didn't go out the night before and all his friends had already been turned out (the BO knew I was coming so she left him in for me), so I was expecting some stupidity. He didn't let me down when I put him on the lunge to warm up (ha, really it was to get the bucks out). He acted the fool for a good 10 minutes and then settled down. When I hopped on he was relaxed and forward (not rushy, though) . He didn't pin his ears when I asked him to canter! The biggest thing was that he didn't get progressively worse as the ride went on, as he's been doing lately. He got more relaxed and better.

Thank goodness. I'm going to ride him every day for the next few days and see how it goes. I'm praying that he's just beginning to show signs of ulcers and we can get it under control. His blood panel didn't show signs of severe ulcers (I didn't even know that could be seen in a CBC, honestly). If he is consistently better during this trial of Ulcerguard, I'll probably have him scoped and we'll go from there.

Way Excited!!

Please ignore the 12yr old valley girl title but I'm WAY EXCITED!!!

I have(knock on wood) been getting quite a few interested horse training calls lately.

This coming Saturday I'm heading to Mocksville to work with 2 Fresians as an "interview" for training a paint and a quarter horse that she owns. The yearling 15.2hh Fresian she owns is scared of the trailer and the vet. I need to get him loading nicely before he gets in the big rig to be shipped to his new home.



Today I got an email from a woman who owns the little mare pictured. This is a 3yr old AQHA PMU mare.

Here is part of the email:

She has never been halter broke and therefore has no ground manners. She only allows you to touch her face while she is eating. The halter we had on her has broken and no longer on her- we had to have the vet sedate her to get that much done. She is up to date on her shots but had not had a coggins since she arrived in 2007. Vet is afraid to try to draw blood and get hurt- can not blame them.I can stand beside her, brush her tail and everywhere but her face. Getting her on a trailer to take her to a trainer is a scary thought for us.I would most interested to know if you can help load her, and feel you can at least get her to lead and if all goes well move on to her under saddle.

I know I don't normally post anything about training or my business and I try not to but I am so childish/Christmas excited about this I had to share!

I am going to the Fresians after a funeral on Saturday so I'm not sure about pictures but I will definitely have some from the 3yr old. I won't get to her until next weekend though.

Pro's lesson from Friday

So I know I'm an awful slacker and didn't get this posted...anyway, it was quite the lesson. He was quite good for the first 20min, and we focused on loosening my dependence on the inside rein, etc. Until suddenly he had a slight hissy fit and went giraffe-face on me. I put my hands up and kept them there but he was stubbornly stuck. Gayle walked over, tweaked his head and said that he really WAS stuck. Well after that, Pro figured he was done with the lesson. He hit the lazy button and leaned on my inside leg.

Clearly, this would not do. He refused to get off my leg even after I opened my inside rein and kicked him repeatedly. So Gayle "gave me spurs" with her car keys as she worked the inside rein - WOW was he mad!!! From there I had to just keep opening with my inside rein and keep kicking. He kept giving me the wrong response - going faster and still leaning on my inside leg. I wasn't allowed to bring him back to a walk, I had to keep asking until he gave me the right response. Imagine us cantering the world's tiniest circle...yup. He FINALLY got off my inside leg but still tested me a bit throughout the lesson. Gayle said we're finally getting to the deep dark parts of what he stubbornly does not want to give up - the last little bits of control.

After that, he returned to his lovely self and we finished the lesson just fine. We even cantered, on purpose!! Haha, it makes me feel like I'm nine years old again, to say that, when I used to be so excited when I could canter in a lesson. :) But yes, we had just a wonderful canter. He's so cute when he tries to figure out how to canter now that he's rebalanced! Makes me excited for Andrea's lesson on Friday!

Saddles and Lessons

Finally, I am getting around to writing an update!  On April 25th I took Jay back to Rocking B and got a Collegiate Sr. Event saddle.  Between Jay's needs and my budget, my options were limited.  I opted not to pay more $$ and try saddles there, but I am still thinking of this as a trial because I can exchange it if it really doesn't work.  Also, Weatherbeeta did replace my Wintec 2000 AP with a brand new one, they just sent me the wrong color so I have to send it back for them to switch out!

Evaluating a new saddle is hard, especially when not comparing different ones...well, actually that is probably hard too!  Anyway, I am trying to sort out how it is working for both me and Jay.  Dennis did have a good point about how the horse will react, though.  He said not to judge it by Jay's immediate reaction too much, because if the saddle he has been being ridden in hurts he is going to like a new one better even if it does not fit perfectly (as long as it is somewhat close, which it should be!)  He said it is like wearing a pair of shoes that hurt y

our big toe, and you get new shoes and they feel GREAT...you just don't know yet that they are going to hurt your little toe after you wear them a while!

Jay did seem to liked the saddle.  He had not been ridden in almost three weeks though between my schedule and the rain, so it was a little hard to judge whether he was really liking the saddle, or was just feeling good from gaining some weight back and not having been ridden.  Then there is also the above caveat about judging his reaction anyway.  He was more forward, and I was able to keep him cantering MUCH easier.  It also felt like my cantering issues were getting SO much better, but more on that in a minute!

The saddle does seem to work for me, too.  I am just worried because it is a big purchase for me and I want it to be right.  The first day I forgot to fold a hand towel under the cantle, which Dennis told me to do as a 

temporary measure while trying it until it could be re-flocked to fit Jay better.  It needs to be lifted in the back just a little bit.  I didn't think a folded hand towel, two thicknesses of towel, would make that much difference.  Apparently it does, because that first ride I had a hard time finding the "sweet spo

t" and felt like I was sinking to the back/having to climb the saddle just a bit.  It was better with the hand towel.

I don't know that this saddle is helping me as much as the "perfect" saddle could, and it would be REALLY nice to have separate dressage and jumping saddles, but I don't think it was hurting my position and working against me either.  I was a little concerned about the straighter flap and the potential limitations for raising my stirrups to jump higher.  I don't want my knee climbing over the block.  I did raise my stirrups a hole, and it seemed OK.  My right ankle will not tolerate very short stirrups anyway, and I feel like that is close to my limit.  I don't *think* I would need to go any shorter than that anyway, as Novice is the upper limit on my aspirations, LOL.

I need some opinions here, though.  When I saw a picture of me with the new saddle, I was concerned about how close my knee is to the bottom edge of the flap.  It feels fine, but is it too close, or is it "within normal limits" so to speak?

Now on to my lesson.  Remember that I thought my cantering issues were so much better?  That disappeared!  My instructor wanted me to do a walk/canter transition.  WHAT!?!  I so didn't feel ready for that, but I knew there was no use arguing.  I asked for it, and Jay delivered in a big way!  Relative to what we have been doing, he TOOK off!  I was almost shaking by the time I got him stopped, and he was missing some mane, LOL.  Upon discussion, though, I had to admit that he did what I ASKED (rather than what I thought/wanted...imagine that!)  For whatever reason, I didn't think he would pick the canter right up, and I had swept my leg back and dug my heel in.  When I reviewed the video, it didn't look that bad, but it felt bad and scared me at the time.  Of course I had to do it again, though.  My instructor pointed out that she didn't care if he trotted a couple of steps, and to just ease him into it. The second one was better.

I was super tense for the rest of the lesson.  When we trotted the rails before she even set up a jump I was just very tense, which caused Jay to be tense and rushing, which caused me to be more tense!  We did progress to our little cross rail, though.  It felt like Jay was landing and going super fast, but I again had to admit that it didn't look that bad on the video.

Coming off the jump Jay was consistently landing on the wrong lead, as I was looking straight ahead and not looking through my turn at all.  (I really just wanted him to TROT the rail, but I was so tense that THAT wasn't happening!)  He got his lead change, though!   (And without me asking since I am so not there yet!)  It felt very forward and I felt like I was much too far forward, but that is because he was dropping his head and having to really work to get the change since I was no help at all!

I rode Jay Wednesday back in the field at home, the first time in a long time.  I just didn't canter!  After the anxiety in my lesson Monday, I just didn't feel ready to canter in the field yet again.  I have not memorized the Intro walk/trot tests yet, so I made up imaginary dressage tests in my imaginary dressage ring.

I didn't want to get off!

What a good pony! It took about 20 minutes to get him off my inside leg as he was very determined to lean on it to the left. But once I got him off it he was amazing. I didn't want to get off. If I opened my outside rein more he'd change his bend to follow and fill it up. I'd established stuff to the left first and then went to the right by the bunny tree and after one or two protests he completely ignored it. He was light in the bridle, up and not diving, balanced, collected, etc :).

We did some figure-8's with 20 and 10m circles and ended with a little bit of leg yielding just to see how it'd go. The last 10-15 minutes I don't think he came off the aids more than once or twice and opening my outside rein and putting my inside leg on was enough to get him back on them in a stride or two. I think he's figuring out what we want and deciding it's not going to kill him to give it to us. I'm really happy with how he (and I ;)) did today. Back out tomorrow so hopefully it will go equally well (or maybe even better!). I'm going to have to start thinking up fun exercises again now that there's time to do stuff after getting him correct. If it doesn't rain I'll try to drag my husband out for pictures.

Skate is a Mare trapped in a Geldings body

Yep - he is like riding a mare. He is so damn sensitive. My instructor thinks he's more like riding a stallion, but I've never ridden a stallion so I can't compare!

Everything I do has the potential to get him worried and fussy. It doesn't matter if I do it correctly according to 'the books', if he doesn't like it that way, its wrong. I wondered aloud in my lesson last week whether riding Skate is actually ruining me for riding other horses b/c he's so particular about how he wants things done that I'm changing everything I know. She thinks he's just teaching me how to be tactful and ride the horse I'm given. I hope she's right.

We spent a long time during my lesson on spiraling in at the trot, transitioning to a walk, and then asking for a turn on the forehand. Holy hell - you'd think I was asking Skate to suddenly do a friggin levade or something, he got so bent out of shape at this request. It was just one of those days where our frustrations overlapped until I wanted to either cry or kill him. I did finally figure out that some days my aids have to be whisper light or he'll have a meltdown. This was one of those days. He was so angry he was beginning to back up and hop up and down - and I had totally let go of my reins at this point trying to prove to him he had a door to go through! I think he just did NOT want my leg on him. I kept trying (in between go forward breaks) and finally got a semblance of what I wanted, so we moved on to leg yielding, which he likes as it's forward. He likes forward lateral, not slow lateral. I think he just feels trapped.

Intermission: Last weekend I went to Lexington Ky for Rolex. It rocked. I spent too much money - was so excited to buy a pair of leather protection boots in dressagey lookin white! Guess what? - I get to the barn to try them and I have 3 mediums and 1 large. DAMNIT. Excitement killed.

My last ride I worked on basic walking. Skate hates walking unless its on a free rein. Like I said before, I think he feels trapped. How else do you get a horse to accept contact at the walk other than just doing it? I work hard to keep my contact light and even and to walk with my seatbones. If I tense, even the slightest, he trots (same with canter, if I don't follow his hind legs with my hips perfectly, he trots). We worked on turning off the outside aids, which he does well in one direction and counterbends in the other, as expected. I played with not actually using direct leg aids, but just lengthening the inside leg down and it helped with the counterbending as he was more apt to bend around the lengthened leg and follow the direction of my hips as the turning cue. At first, I just got a lot of pissy pony and trotting. After a while, he seemed to chill out and listen to my seat. The less aids I give, the better. I think I am a fairly quiet rider, but I'm obviously not quiet enough for Skate.

As always, more work needed.

Another good attempt!

Pro was quite good tonight, considering that I'm still fumbling around with getting my aids correct. I don't remember who it was that ever taught me (or allowed me!) to hang on the inside rein while turning, but I cursed them a lot tonight! It's an insanely hard habit to break. And it's worse made worse because Pro wants me to hang on the inside rein so he can have an excuse to engage me in a pulling game.

He was still better going right than going left, although he was better to the left near the end of the ride. At one point while trotting, I did everything right at the same time (the stars aligned!) and he magically turned into super pony!! So powerful! :) Whenever he started to dive, I realized my hands also dropped as well. It was a good reminder to keep them up up up and pushed forward, with the thumbs on *top* of my hands.

I'm excited to see how much progress we've made by Friday, which is our next lesson with Gayle. :)

God damn po... Oh, I get it!

A two-parter tonight as there were pictures to get off my camera from Sunday!

Sunday Kate and I met up for her to give me a mini-version of her lesson of don'ts. She got on first to demonstrate. After about 10-15 minutes Pro stopped walking around counter-bent and was looking pretty good. When he does this correctly he breaks at the poll and tracks up easier and looks soft and forward. Unfortunately most of my pictures he's over-flexing or broke at the 3rd vertebrae (Kate didn't stay on him long once he was going correctly). But here's a fuzzy version to show how he looks when he's correct!

Then I got on and Kate yelled at me for about 30 minutes ;). Don't cross my rein over (and here I see why she got sucked into arguing with Gayle for awhile. The yelling started if my outside hand even got over his outside shoulder, well before it got to the crest). Trying to force my outside hand out and my inside hand forward to give felt like trying to ride with my feet. And Pro, of course, was all too happy to say "Oh, counter-bend? Ok, I can do that!" and torque his body to the outside or drop his head when my hands went down. I avoided beating Kate with the dressage whip, Pro avoided a melt-down from the confusing signals, and eventually we got a pretty nice trot. I brought him down to the walk intending to just reinforce the idea at the walk and get off and the turd turned back into a giraffe. I admit it, I bailed at that point. I'd had a very stressful week the week before and couldn't handle any more. Kate cheered me up and then Pro got a bath while I convinced myself I didn't hate him. He was super cute for his bath though, he liked the spa treatment, especially the mane massage.

Tuesdays tend to be my busiest days at work so I wasn't too sure about trying this whole thing out again tonight on my own, but I promised Kate to give it a try so off we went. It felt a little bit less like riding with my feet, but not much. Then the light bulbs started going off. Another "don't" for the list - DON'T tense your outside leg while trying to get him off your inside leg. That one made sense, if I tensed my outside leg his spine didn't have room to bend! Kate's talk of shifting your inside seat bone to the outside made more sense tonight, too. I sort of scooched the inside butt cheek towards the outside and that was a subtle enough cue that if he wasn't intentionally being dumb and I didn't have my outside leg braced he'd get off my inside leg. And then the major light bulb went off and I figured out the "why" of the outside rein being pulled out. It's to give him room to bend! So it's not so much pull the outside rein out like we'd been doing to the inside to get him to give his nose, but more of a holding the outside rein passively out so that he's not being held in this rectangle while I'm asking him to bend.

I vaguely remember someone teaching me that when a horse is correctly bent their neck should fill up the outside rein, but I always just figured that meant they'd magically bend into the rein. But just like with my outside leg I have to make the outside a pleasant place that he wants to go. If my outside hand is even over his shoulder than it's blocking the outside shoulder from going out and pushes him onto my inside leg. No wonder he's walking around counter-bent, I'm TELLING him to counter-bend with my old cues! After I figured that out Pro gave a big sigh and said "finally" and gave me an awesome ride. Before all the lights going off I was getting a quarter circle or if I was lucky a half circle of him going correct before I'd screw up a piece and it'd fall apart. After figuring out what was going on we walked and trotted in both directions with only momentary lapses (probably due to me dropping my hands as they typically resulted in him curling rather than staying up in the bridle).

I was so proud of Pro. Like everything in dressage, once I got out of the horse's way everything became very easy. I didn't get to play around with the awesomeness for very long because we were supposed to have company over at 7:30, but I think I've got it figured out enough that I can recreate it on Saturday. Now I wish I hadn't agreed to swap riding times with Kate ;). I want to see if I can do it again!

Being my own Gayle

...is exactly what I tried to do in yesterday's ride. Now that I've had time to think through my lesson last Friday, it makes sense to me logically. However, my body vehemently disagrees and has fought me every step of the way. I realized that I've been riding the wrong way for 16 years...and that's no easy thing to erase. Years and years of ingrained muscle memory! Trying to override that and make new habits is definitely difficult. So I had to "be my own Gayle" and just keep repeating instructions over and over and over...

So I tried to be super-conscious of what my hands were doing at all times. I kept having to repeat "outside out", meaning bringing my outside hand OUT and away from his neck, especially while turning. Just try it...go ahead. It's insanely hard! And I kept having to repeat "give inside" to get my stupid inside hand to stop pulling back and engaging in the pulling game. And remember to bump him with my inside leg to stop him from leaning on it, which he desperately wanted to do when I opened my outside hand out and gave my inside rein forward. We had some interesting moments...counter-bending and scurrying around like a crab.

Interestingly, he was much better going right. I'm not quite sure if that's him or me, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that it's me doing something wrong to the left. We had much more giraffe-face going left. Which made my hands go down. Or perhaps my hands going down made his head go up (haha, most likely). Actually they seem to be related so that it's a bad cycle of hands down, head up, hands down more, head up...and then my brain kicks in and puts my hands back up. A few times he didn't just put his head up because he was unhappy that I didn't let the bit drop in his mouth (which happens when I put my hands down where he likes them), but he put his head WAY up to protest. Which means I had to put my hands WAY up until he realized I'm not going to let the bit drop. And around and around we went like that...I'm sure Big Horse's owner thought we were crazy. Until he gave up and put his head down, and I put my hands back into the normal-up-ness.

Though we never made it out of the walk, I was pleased with our work to the right at the walk. He was figuring out that when I open my outside hand out, give my inside rein, and apply my outside leg aids (and move my inside seatbone toward the outside), that he's supposed to turn. Without putting his head up. I'm hoping that more practice this week will make us ready for Friday's lesson. :)