Monday, January 19, 2009

Sarah's Ride

This is from the message Sarah left me:

"Werther was pretty good today. He was not as energetic as last week but I forgot my long Dressage whip and I think maybe that was the difference. I worked on Werther's collect canter quite a bit, and I did lots of transitions to the canter from the walk and trot. I was trying to get his collected canter more energetic and I found that if his neck is a little longer he is a little less uphill but he has better energy and vise versa. What I think I need to do is play with going back and forth between longer neck with impulsion and and shorter neck with less impulsion, and work on getting him a little more jazzed. I did some tempi changes to see if I could get him excited, and he was not excited today, but the tempi's were pretty good. I did practice half steps, which are piaffe like steps a little bit to try and get him a little quicker on his feet and little excited, but he was still kind of sleepy, so it was not quite as good as last week. Also, he stumbled a few times at the walk, not any huge trips, but it was like he was not setting his right front down squarely."

Ellie in: I'm really okay with him being lazy, I would much rather have a horse that I have to work to create energy with than struggle to contain it. It lowers the risk level significantly for me with my disability. I don't know what the tripping was about, it was 20 degrees today which is like a heat wave to our horses compared to last week, so I bet he played really hard outside today and was just being extra lazy and didn't feel like picking his feet up. I have a lesson tomorrow so Sarah can watch him from the ground, and if he still has that little stumble we'll evaluate further and I'll probably have Dr. Sarah come check him out. 

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