Summertime

The last few weeks at work have been pretty intense, but now summer is here.  Today at 7am I was wearing a tshirt and thankful the outdoor arena was shaded by trees.  It must get pretty warm during the day, since when I see Cupid in the morning he has dried sweat on him.

I had my last few lessons a little earlier so I can get to work earlier, which means I have to ride in the outside arena since they drag the covered arena at this time.  The outside arena is now set up as a dressage court, and no jumping allowed so we did flatwork.  Cupid gets a little tired in the deep sand, and sometimes stumbles a little with his hind legs.

Today I finally had a little breakthrough with not letting Cupid ignore me when he wants to be lazy.  We did our walk warmup, then we went on a 20 meter circle and up to trot my trainer told me right away to get as big a trot as I can out of him.  Get where I feel like I need to slow him down.  So I clucked and squeezed and Cupid was trotting fairly big.  Once he got going I didn't have to do much for him to stay there.  We shortened the trot a few strides then back into a big trot a few times.  First to the left, then to the right.  After that Cupid was very responsive the rest of the lesson, and didn't ignore me when I asked him to pick up a trot again, and when we did trot he was moving out nice.

We cantered on a 20 meter circle both directions, with me focusing on keeping the contact when I ask for the transition, and then sitting up.  Also I continued working on bending my elbows and keeping my hands closed.  Then we did a little leg yielding at a trot from the quarter line back to the rail.  We worked on making sure we were straight before we start the leg yield.  Cupid was good, a little better moving off the right leg.

Outdoor ring - this is a few weeks old when I still needed a jacket!