Cob Jockey

You'd better believe that I'm afraid of jinxing myself by writing this post, but...

I'm starting to feel like I can ride my horse well without my trainer.

He doesn't believe it either.

In the last three rides on my own, I've been able to get the quality of work I can get in lessons.  That's unheard of in my whole time riding this horse.  And good timing too, since baby arrived on Sunday!

When you forget both of your Dressage pads at home, oops.

Something Delight's owner said resonated with me: she said to get good work out of Delight she had to amp her up.  Now, Delight is a lot less...skittery...than Connor is, but skittery =/= amped.  I knew what she meant, and yesterday, I tried to be quicker with my aids and more insistent.  It worked.

Taken from the worst angle ever, but look at that body.  And that sexy truck in the background.

Right now, my goals are:
- Develop more crossover in the leg yields
- Get a consistent, usable trot earlier in the rides

Using the fan to style his sweet hair.

He tends to be fairly inconsistent in the trot in the beginning of rides right now.  The tempo can change suddenly, he'll toss me to one side or the other, he'll hop.  Then after a while, he settles in and gives me that nice trot that I can "do anything with"  Unfortunately, often he'll get that trot so late in a lesson we aren't able to do anything with it.  We need to develop that sooner so we can work on movements within the trot.