I had another lesson last night. I am really enjoying having a set of educated eyes on the ground to keep Mort and me on the right track. I have been focusing so much on my outside rein while tracking left to keep his shoulder from falling out I've actually been restricting him. I knew that I was feeling something sticky and I kept playing with things to fix it but I hadn't gotten around to fully figuring it out yet. A suggestion to let go more with my outside rein while taking a more consistent feel of the inside (left) enabled Mort to bend really well. He did want to drop some in the front end, but that was fairly fixable. I was so worried about losing his outside shoulder since that has traditionally been the problem that I was actually restricting him with our troubled left bend. Fun stuff--it's always the rider's fault.
We worked a lot on trying to get Mort to keep his feet on the ground a little longer. He likes to use his legs like pogo-sticks. This is efficient for moving quickly like a thoroughbred but not so much the ideal for dressage. We played around with trying to slow him with marginal success. We next tried to stretch his strides while maintaining a slower post and that worked fairly well. Doing some bend/counter-bend loosened the shoulders. He gave me some really fun and light trot with all of this.
Next was getting a canter where he had that hesitation and really folded his hind legs. I think this was easier for me to feel but physically harder for him to accomplish. He broke to trot a couple times to figure it out but we did get some really good moments of this as well. He just needs me to play more and more with it to strengthen that hind end and fully understand what I'm asking. Definitely a winter project to get his gaits more adjustable (also a forever and ever continuing goal).
We touched on 10-meter circles and leg yield. Both rode better in the sitting trot. I imagine I'll ride all of Test 3 sitting (other than stretchy trot) and some of Test 2. With my more supple outside rein the left bend in the 10-meter trot circle was a lot easier to establish.
We also experimented some with Mort's lengthens. He can get a bit uneven still so we played with me pushing for a few strides and re-adjusting often. I had to make sure that I was getting his hind-end moving before letting go some with my reins all while still trying to keep him uphill. This is fairly difficult for us still, but if I back him down to less than max throttle we're starting to get places. He's started to learn about just flipping his legs and not using his hind-end, which can be fun but it isn't the end goal. More strength and more half-halts.
We essentially spent the lesson touching on some of my problem areas for this weekend. We discussed a sort-of plan for what to play with on Friday in the better footing to see what I can ask for in the tests. I am really looking forward to seeing how we do this weekend. It's a fairly small show (our regionals were last weekend so a lot of people aren't opting to show two weekends in a row), so hopefully that will just add to Mort feeling relaxed and happy. He gets today off. He'll have fairly easy days Wednesday and Thursday where we just touch on things like in our lesson yesterday.
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