New Strategies

I keep meaning to do a big post on my last show, but I have to get the photos from my Mom. I had a lesson on Tuesday after the show. Sarah and I are trying a new strategy, she got on Werther first, and work with him for about 15 minutes. The plan is that she gets him really jazzed up and listening, so I don't have to spend half the lesson establishing impulsion and I can have a better feel of where Werther needs to be all the time. It really helped, because Werther was going forward I was able to make smaller corrections. When Sarah rode Werther one of the last things she did was some two tempis. Sarah let me try some flying changes on Werther in the lesson which was just a blast. I've done flying changes on Werther before, but this was different because I had been doing changes the hunter/jumper way. using opposing leg and hand. With the dressage change you ask with your leg and your hand on the same side. It is going to take a lot to get my muscle memory switched over! Thursday's hack also had some change in strategy, but nothing that was planned. I decided to ride Werther outside, and as I was getting on I dropped my whip. Now if I were to get off and get back on again, it would probably take me awhile depending on how cooperative Werther would be about standing. So I decided to try riding without my whip and see how it would go. Werther was really lazy without it. I did coax him into a canter, and got up to two point and got into the worlds slowest hand gallop in an effort to get Werther jazzed up. I went back down to the trot, and it was much better. I took advantage of some ground poles someone had left out and trotted and cantered Werther over them in a little course. Werther hasn't been jumped in a long time but he had a lot of fun with the ground poles, especially when I took a longer line, he really got his eye on the poles and got excited. While it wasn't my planned ride, it was a good lesson in how to work with what you have.