Lesson

I had a really good lesson with Sarah this morning. Werther was a little displeased to find himself inside all by himself, especially since all the show horses just got back and the entire barn was outside while he had to work. Werther let out one big whinny then pretty much got over it. I had Mom sit in the viewing area in the indoor, Werther was a little distracted when Maddy and Mom where up there last night, and I wanted to make sure he didn't try and make an issue out of it. We started out worked on getting a forward working trot, Werther had a bit of energy today, so that wasn't too difficult. Werther did want to look out the windows at the far end of the indoor so he could see his friends grazing, so I had to ask him for a little bit of a exaggerated bend so he had something else to think about. We did some 20m circles and leg yields off of the quarter line to the wall, which went well, the leg yields were particularly nice. We worked on our canter transitions, which were much better today, Sarah even let me do some transitions off of the circle and in the corners on the rail. Definitely a step in the right direction, but he still gets a little defensive when I ask for the canter. I have a feeling this is going to take me a long time to get really right, but it will be so worth it when I finally do. We finished up by doing some work with the free walk, coordinating pushing for the big walk while still maintaining a little frame and not getting him too jazzed is challenging. The hardest part is timing the transition back into the working walk and making it look effortless. We finished with walk halt and trot halt transitions, my practice this week helped, but that transition still needs a lot of work. I faxed in my entries for Mason City today, I hope I got everything right! The next set of entries are due on the 19th, my goal is to have them done by the 12th.