Quality?

With quality in mind, I saddled Speedy for our Sunday ride. Now that school has resumed and I have to go to work every weekday morning, my weekend rides have to really count. This sometimes sets me up for failure as I often put a lot of pressure on those two rides. Other times I revel in the luxury of having two days to ride both horses; this was one of those weekends.

Speedy tried all of his usual things; fussing to the right, serious head tilt, stiff when tracking left, and so on. Rather than get upset, I just narrowed my focus and tried to get the very best I could from each stride. 

Tracking left is becoming a bit of an issue. He is just so dang stiff that direction. (I am wondering if he needs another adjustment by the chiropractor; I need to think about that.) In an effort to get some softness on that left rein, we did more counter canter. I was pretty happy with the result, bone jarring as it was. We did a 20-meter circle on the left lead, crossed the diagonal, and did a full 20-meter counter canter circle at the other end of the arena without losing the canter. And we did it more than once. 

It wasn't perfect, but I've only been able to do that exercise ... never. I did manage some counter canter half circles with Christian Schacht in June, but we did a full circle this weekend. And I could feel Speedy's relief when we were back on the correct bend. It helped him see that some bend is a good thing.

Speedy's thought bubble.

I had much better luck with our right lead canter. I decided to just work on adjusting his trot work to the right by shortening and lengthening his stride with my seat. He shortened his stride quite easily; when I asked for a bigger stride, he kept breaking into the canter. I decided that I needed to be much quieter with my legs as I asked for the longer stride, but it also gave me some information about getting a better canter transition.

Once his trot work was pretty adjustable, I went ahead and asked for the right lead canter. Usually, I sit and then ask with an inside leg at the girth and the outside leg just behind the girth. This time, I simply sat lightly and thought canter ... and was rewarded with a much softer transition. We made a few circles and did a few trot to canter transitions. 

Focusing on quality makes it easy to be pleased with the ride!