Rode again yesterday even though I had a cold and felt miserable. Filly always cheers me up :)
More of the same, but we tried some of the yields at trot. They were even more responsive but given slightly grudgingly. We've been through this sort of thing with Filly before. What she needs under these circumstances is lots of reassurance and rubs. It's surprisingly tricky to apply the aids and give reassuring rubs remaining in balance during a rising trot !
We then spent sometime at canter trying to get rhythm and relaxation. I follow the classical method of training as modified by James Roberts. So for each gait I am looking for Rhythm, Relaxation, Forwards, Straightness, Flexion, Collection. In that order and if I loose one we go back a step to fix it. So as we have done very little canter work we needed to get the rhythm and relaxation first. As there is no straightness in this I was not too worried about where we went just so long as we maintained gait and kind of went around the school.
In fact Filly quickly told me should would prefer to do a 15m circle around a cone we had been working with earlier so I just let her do that whilst she worked on her rhythm. After around 5 minutes of continuous canter she gave a huge relaxing snort and lowered her head. A few more strides with relaxation for her to really get the feel and that was job done. Slight relaxing of my body and we stopped in two strides !
I feel the right way to go with this stage of the progression is to just set it up so we can stay out of their way and let them figure out how to canter nicely. There is no way that I can really influence this other than to stay out of their way with balance and stay off of their heads to leave them the freedom to explore their own bodies and how they move with 90kg perched on top.
More of the same, but we tried some of the yields at trot. They were even more responsive but given slightly grudgingly. We've been through this sort of thing with Filly before. What she needs under these circumstances is lots of reassurance and rubs. It's surprisingly tricky to apply the aids and give reassuring rubs remaining in balance during a rising trot !
We then spent sometime at canter trying to get rhythm and relaxation. I follow the classical method of training as modified by James Roberts. So for each gait I am looking for Rhythm, Relaxation, Forwards, Straightness, Flexion, Collection. In that order and if I loose one we go back a step to fix it. So as we have done very little canter work we needed to get the rhythm and relaxation first. As there is no straightness in this I was not too worried about where we went just so long as we maintained gait and kind of went around the school.
In fact Filly quickly told me should would prefer to do a 15m circle around a cone we had been working with earlier so I just let her do that whilst she worked on her rhythm. After around 5 minutes of continuous canter she gave a huge relaxing snort and lowered her head. A few more strides with relaxation for her to really get the feel and that was job done. Slight relaxing of my body and we stopped in two strides !
I feel the right way to go with this stage of the progression is to just set it up so we can stay out of their way and let them figure out how to canter nicely. There is no way that I can really influence this other than to stay out of their way with balance and stay off of their heads to leave them the freedom to explore their own bodies and how they move with 90kg perched on top.
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