Healthy Habits

Cupid has been working hard towards building a proper training level dressage frame.  Since I see him every day it's hard for me to notice the physical changes, but he is developing his topline.  After I ride I tried to give him a little neck massage, and after a pretty good lesson I felt a knot in his neck, a few inches below the poll.  I contacted our chiropractor, who unfortunately is unavailable but she recommended a body worker for massage and also suggested I do stretches with Cupid.  He seemed to struggle with the carrot stretches, especially to the left side - but it is hard to get him standing square so that didn't help. 

Cupid's massage lasted over an hour.  He was a little fidgety to start, but seemed to really like it when she worked on his back and hind end. 

For Christmas I got him a Back on Track fleece blanket; he tends to feel stiff and slow to warm up when it's cold and I am hoping this might help him with that, as well as hopefully just general muscle soreness.

We hadn't jumped since his sore foot, but I thought we were ready our lesson yesterday.  Unfortunately Cupid was struggling with the footing, so we ended up sticking with just poles on the ground.  They had just removed most of the jumps so there were a few spots that hadn't been dragged in a while, and either skipped watering or did it lighter than usual so it was very dry.  Although Cupid's attitude was quite good, he just didn't seem comfortable and stumbled a few times.  He is just weirdly sensitive to footing; he doesn't like it too loose or deep, or if there are spots that are drier or just different.  The upside with the footing was I got a loveliest, perfect hunter pleasure trot. 

We had a lot of trouble picking up the left lead canter.  We got it the first time by starting with a right lead canter, and doing a trot change on the diagonal but after that couldn't seem to.  We tried it on a circle, making it a little smaller then leg yielding out before I ask for the canter. My trainer suggested I let him counter canter half a lap and then ask for a trot change in a corner, and it worked once but after that he was happy to keep counter cantering. 

My trainer told me to try getting the canter from the walk.  I wasn't sure I could do it since I felt he was a little behind the leg, but I started with a few walk-trot transitions to wake him up a little, then asked walk-canter and got it.  We still couldn't get the left lead, but I was still a little pleased that we got the walk-canter at all. 

I felt like my aids aren't clear enough for him to distinguish I wanted left lead; Cupid thought he was doing the correct things by just cantering.  I need to work on making my legs more effective.  There was a few times he broke from the canter to trot, which I shouldn't allow and is just him being lazy, but I think I need to be patient with the left lead.  I think a few lessons riding on a lunge line will help me