3/20/05
Schooling Dressage on Bob
Bob and I are thinking of doing some dressage shows, so
it seemed like a good idea to throw on the dressage saddle and
get a lesson. He was out hunting last weekend, but I left him at home
this past Saturday (4 hours out, and tons of running).
We had some awesome work today and I think in a couple of
weeks we'll be ready for our First Level debut.


 Come on Bob, follow me out to the arena....
 

 We did some warm up, then went to leg yielding and then shoulder in. For Bob, it helps to get him off his front end.
 My left leg works better.
 
 But my right leg wasn't doing too bad.
 We started out a bit tipped and on the forehand.
 
 But he started letting me balance him and started to lift his front end.
 It took some work, but he gave me a place to sit and it felt quite nice.
 
 This was work for him, too. But, it's the best work we've done yet (I guess fox hunting really does help for strength).
 
 I'm so excited to see if this can transfer over to a show. I'm impressed, and my trainer seems happy, but it'll be nice to hear a judges impression.
I know we're not steady, but I'd like to see if we're getting there.
 Here's some of our work on lengthen.  It's a little tough, because when I gave forward with my hands, his head started going down.
 Here we're lengthening again, but I balanced my giving with a little bumping up. It's so difficult to know how to tell the horse what you want. Bob easily does this stuff in the field, but I have to figure out how to ask for it.
 And our last lengthen. He was getting tired, and his head was starting to go down. Still, he was game to reach forward and give me more thrust from behind.