Catching up!

This last week was crazy after going to Mason City and prepping for Alpine. So I'm going to do a quick recap to get everybody caught up. Werther had the day off on Monday and I had a lesson on Tuesday. We worked on energy, position, and circle size. We did a lot of transitions to work on getting Werther to move more off of the leg. We also switched my whip to my right hand, even though my left leg is weaker, Sarah thinks it will be more effective if I am using the whip in my stronger hand. For my position, it is just a matter of sitting up and back, not dropping my left shoulder and keeping my hands down and following at the walk and canter and allowing Werther's energy to go forward. We practiced getting Werther to go forward, shaping with the leg, and then the hand. It is also important that while he is moving quickly, it always feels like he should be able to give you one notch more of energy. For the circles, we just worked in the dressage court and practiced cantering a lot of circles, making sure I hit the track exactly were I need to. I went though Training 4 with Sarah, it went fairly well. Werther had the day off on Wednesday and I went though both tests 3 and 4 when I hacked him on Thursday. We really need to get the RSVP letters for the ring at home, I was having a lot of trouble doing the figure 8 in test 3 without them. I also had a little trouble with the half circles, and the turn to X to halt at G.