Making up for Lost Time

Cupid got Monday off, and on Tuesday we had a pretty good ride in the covered arena.  He didn't feel quite so lazy, but instead of settling for that I tried to push him for a little more still.  We kept it fairly light, continuing the things we worked on in our last lesson just less small circles.  I decided to just focus on the trot work again and not canter.

Then on Wednesday I rode Cupid in the outdoor arena, and as soon as I got on I could tell he had a little more energy.  It was slightly cooler... or maybe because I've been giving him apples all week :p  We walked a few minutes.  I've been doing some stretches while we walk, rotating/windmilling my arms one at a time, taking my feet out of the stirrups and stretching my legs out long, then lifting my leg out to the side.  The last one is quite painful for me, tight hip flexors, but isn't so bad if I keep my other leg in the stirrup.

After my stretches we did some shallow loop serpentines each direction, then went up to the trot a bit sooner then usual.  And Cupid wanted to go!  So we only trotted a few minutes before I asked him to canter, thinking he would quickly get tired and want to stop.  But he was full of energy!  We cantered on a 20 meter circle and did some transitions down to the trot and back to the canter.  Then we changed directions and we got the left lead, even though Cupid ran into it a little.  We transitioned down to the trot, then when I asked for the canter we got a fairly decent up transitions, yay!  I may have pushed my luck a bit because the third time he picked up the right lead, but we went back down to the trot and then he got it.  I thought three times was good, but then Cupid broke to a trot so I made him canter again.  Overall I was happy with how he felt, though I felt a bit loose and sloppy myself, tipping forward a bit and my heels were coming up and feet out of the stirrups.

Then I let Cupid walk a little to catch his breath, though he was still feeling pretty good.  He was a bit distracted at one part of the arena so we did some small circles as we walked by.  We ended with a fairly long trot set incorporating exercises similar to our last lesson.  Cupid was a bit quick initially but we managed to channel that energy into pretty nice work!

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