Good Lines and Bad

I generally ride in the morning before work, and usually have the arena to myself.  An additional benefit is they drag early morning, so I can see our tracks which is very helpful in checking straightness or geometry.  Of course by the end of our ride it is kind of hard to tell!

Here are some things I noticed in our ride today.  Our small circles are tighter going left (which is the right circle in the picture). 

Small circles - the tighter one on the right was actually on the left rein

On a 20 meter circle at the trot I was happy to see only two hoof prints, indicating that Cupid was tracking up exactly.  However the lines indicate a bit of toe drag.  The arena was deep dragged last week so may have been a little deeper.

I haven't jumped in a while but took advantage of the low crossrails set up.  I felt a bit rusty and was throwing myself on Cupid's neck a bit, but he was being good.  I was pretty happy with his trot changes between the jumps.  What I really need to do it put up cones before/after the jumps so I come in straight and complete the lines.  Here's one fence I really goofed, you can see the bad turn to the fence and then being very offcenter, which got even worse after landing.

Bad approach...

...leads to landing crooked

We were straighter into this jump, but did waver a bit on the landing side.

Better but still not straight

By the end of our ride the tracks are no longer discernible!

In other news Cupid is starting to shed.  This is the first year he wasn't clipped, so it should be extra fun.  :)