Half Pass to Flying Change

Well once anyway...

My Saturday lesson got bumped to Sunday - show season is well under way and Sean Cunningham, owner and trainer at STC Dressage must go where duty calls. That meant that I rode by myself on Saturday, but it was fun to challenge myself to ride with as much purpose as I would have had Sean been coaching us in a lesson. When I rode on Thursday, I focused on our trot work without doing any cantering. On Friday, I focused on the canter work with some time spent doing simple changes with very little trotting. My plan was to go into Saturday's lesson set up to tackle all of the things. Then Sean rescheduled for Sunday; I stuck to my plan and was rewarded with some great work from the big brown horse.

I usually video my Sunday rides, but since my lesson would be on Sunday, I used my Pivo to record Saturday's ride instead. I was pretty eager to look through the video as we had had some pretty good moments, but as luck would have it, Pivo lost me again and again. When I sat down later that day to check my settings, I remembered that had I switched horse mode off in favor of people mode while I was testing my new shade box. I had forgotten to return the settings to horse mode which meant I have no video proof of the great work we had done. Bummer ...

Pivo did capture some of the ride though.

That doesn't mean I can't tell you about it though. Both the trot and canter work left me smiling from ear to ear. I rode shoulder-in to renver to travers to half pass. And while we'll never get 10s for anything, I felt like we were doing solid 6.0 work at the very least. Sean has given me many tools to use over the past two years, and when I use them correctly, Izzy gets pretty darn fancy. Now that I am really focusing on riding him forward into both reins evenly, he is better balanced which makes him more confident.

My goal for the canter work was to get a flying change in each direction. We got one of them, but the other is still a hard no from Izzy. The thing is that now I know how to deal with refusals, and I know what the refusal means. Usually. Izzy really only refuses when he feels out of balance. So rather than feel defeated or frustrated, I know to work the problem from a new angle. As I worked on the right to left change, the one that I can actually get, it occurred to me that I might have better luck doing it from the canter half pass.

An almost out of frame leg yield.

I started out with some canter travers down the long side and then did a canter half pass across the whole diagonal. When I asked for the change at M, Izzy fell apart, threw his head in the air, and gave me a big NOPE. Then I remembered that in one of the Third Level tests, you half pass to the center line, ride straight, turn, and then do a flying change. I couldn't remember exactly how it went, but I used the half pass to keep Izzy together across the diagonal. Since he anticipates the change the instant I cross the diagonal in canter, I needed something to distract him.

I had Izzy pick up a right lead canter, and then I had him canter half pass from K to X. I rode straight up the centerline to G and then asked for the flying change where we then tracked left at C. And he did it! Of course, it didn't work so well left to right, but the half pass did force him to think about something other than the change.

Despite not being able to see the work, I was still thrilled with how rideable Izzy was. It's rare that he absolutely melts down anymore, and when I feel as though it might happen, I now have so many ways to change the conversation and diffuse the anxiety. He's happier, and I am much happier. I don't know if we'll ever make it back into the show ring, but I sure hope so. I still have my eye on a Silver Medal, and even though Speedy helped me win so many of the awards that USDF and CDS both offer, I'd like to see even some of that success with my big brown horse.

​If we can get this flying change, maybe we can get back on a showing schedule.