Drivers Ed

At a bit of a loss on Cupid's prognosis, I decided to give him a few days off.  So we've been doing a lot of groundwork this week.  My trainer gave me a refresher course on ground driving, and we did that on Monday and Tuesday.  Cupid seems happy doing it, and from what I could tell walking behind him he looked pretty good.  He oversteps nicely at the walk (clearing his front hoofprints by about an inch).  He was not pokey in the trot, I have to hussle a bit to keep up!  My trainer told me to work on the same things I've been doing in the saddle, keeping my elbows by my side and making sure there is steady contact in the outside rein. 

The first day we mostly just went around the arena and across the long diagonals, practicing walk-halt-walk transitions and walk-trot-walk.  The second day I added some shallow serpentines too.  I still have a little trouble with Cupid cutting corners, but it's been fun.

Today we did groundwork.  Cupid was good with the things we've done before: halting and walking forward on voice/body commands, yielding his haunches, backing up, sending forward.  He was a little confused backing up between two poles.  Then when I asked him to step over a pole with just his front legs and stop, he thought that was super confusing.  Once he was okay with that, I asked him to sidepass over it he was completely baffled.  We did practice a little sidepass the other day in front of the arena fence, but it did not seem to translate.  So when he took the smallest sideways step I gave him big praise.  Eventually we were able to get several steps, though we need to keep working on it.