Lesson

The countdown to show time continues, and I had my second to last lesson before Mason City. My amazing reader Leslie came over with Sarah so we could ride though training level 1 and 2 before going to the show. I got on a little early and walked Werther outside and when Sarah and Leslie got the barn we went into the indoor. We did some work at the trot pushing Werther forward and building the trot, then we went into the canter and spent a lot of time on that. I'm still working on the connection and bend. I had trouble again with the right lead. We did a lot of canter transitions to help me, and stretch out Werther's back. Sarah said I should do "127" canter trot transitions in my warm up so Werther is really prepared and knows we can canter at any moment. One of the great things about Werther is that we can do something like canter transitions over and over again, which are easy for him and he does not get bothered or mad about it. Now if it were a canter zig zag 127 times we might have another story. We rode though each test once, I was terrible riding training level 1, it took me a while to get back into test riding mode, and planning 3 or 4 steps ahead, and Werther was really behind my leg. The second test was much better, but Werther got a little too curled in his neck and I really had to focus on lightening my hands and pushing him foreword. I am afraid that I am really going to suck at training level but I did so well at Intro that it doesn't really have a challenge any more and I am capable of executing all the movements, I just have to make sure I don't give Werther the wrong signals. Sarah is riding Werther on Monday, Leslie is coming over again on my lesson on Tuesday to read for me, Werther has the day off on Wednesday and Thursday is last hacking day before the show. I think i'll take the risk of over riding test and practice them again on Thursday. I would rather have to Werther over anticipate than me be under prepared.