All The Kings' Horses

 Monday July 7th - I worked with Gia on light flat work doing walk/halt transitions and focusing on straightness. Tuesday July 8th - This was a little more in depth.  Gia and I did flatwork, but we worked at the halt, walk, trot and some canter as well.  I started out with transitions, and focusing on her obedience to the aids, both up and down.  When those were good, at each gait, I started to ask her to be straighter.  I also started to add more suppling work - asking for bend and counter bend, but only slightly.  Her canter work was difficult for her, but she was honestly trying, and there were no thoughts of bucking, only her thinking about what I was asking her to do, and her trying to figure it out! Wednesday July 9th - I had to make an emergency run to the vet for my sugar glider Jimmy.  He's doing ok now, but he had gotten his foot trapped in one of his pouches overnight.  He fought all night to free himself, but only ended up twisting him...

 I'm a bit behind in writing my blogs because we had a week of summer camp and it was a little crazy, so I'm just now catching up on everything.   On Saturday 6/28/25 I worked with Gia briefly on walk and halt transitions.  I also worked with her on suppling her jaw and poll. Monday 6/30/25 was the first day of summer camp, and some of the campers wanted to watch Gia and I work on our flatwork.  I showed them what she and I have been working on with our transition work between all gaits.  She gave them a lovely treat of a couple nice canter transitions! On Tuesday 7/1/25, the campers were able to observe my lesson with Suzin.  We were working on fine tuning the aids for the transitions, as well as straightness.  I was having a little trouble with getting Gia to go forward.  At one point, she popped into a canter that I didn't ask for, but she was amazingly engaged behind and really sitting down.  I felt like we could almost pirouette!...

  I have started studying a very interesting book, simply called "The Dressage Horse" by Harry Boldt.  It was suggested by my dressage instructor, and it's more of a reference than a book to read.  This page shows how he illustrates the aids for some of the basic transitions.   I have been working on refining the halt and walk aids with Gia these past two days since the heat has been so bad.   On Wednesday, I took her into the grass dressage arena, so the sun wouldn't reflect up off the sand and make us even hotter.  It also has more trees, thus more shade.  We practiced Harry's aids to the halt a lot.  Gia didn't seem to be getting it very well.  Possibly, because it was a slight change from what we had been doing.  Possibly because she just needs more time.  But eventually, instead of just softening the hands when she responded correctly, I just started dropping the reins completely, and letting her do whatever she wante...

 I took Gia (and several other horses and riders from Castle Farm) on a trail ride at a local nature preserve yesterday.  We went out pretty early, but it was still fairly hot out.  Gia was pretty patient in, and tied to, the trailer, while I attended to everyone else - there were 7 other horses and riders there.  We were out on the trail itself for probably about 2 hours, and for me, Gia was great!  However, she immediately decided to wage war on a visiting horse we had.  One of my clients had brought her own horse from her home to meet us and ride with us.  As soon as Gia was in a close proximity, and any other time Gia was within reach, she made a beeline for Panda with a snaked neck, ears pinned and tail swishing.  Poor Panda didn't even do anything.  Unfortunately, I had my hands full with some other more important issues, so I wasn't really able to address Gia's issues.  I just had to keep her away from Panda, as much as I could....

 Monday 6/16/25 -  I worked with Gia on her flatwork.  I had her do transitions between walk and halt, then walk and trot.  Throughout the transition work, I also asked her to keep her poll up, and helped her work on staying straight, as well as changing bend.  Things were going really well, and she was really obedient, so I decided to try adding trot to canter transitions.  Before I cantered, I made sure that I had her straight and that we had done a few up and down transitions correctly and obediently first.  When I asked for the canter, she was delayed at first, then blasted forward, so I brought her back to trot, which was too fast, so then back to walk.  I had her go back to trot again, and I played with the straightness and the tempo of the trot, back-and-forth, until I had what I wanted, then asked for canter again.  Same answer.  Rinse, repeat.  This went on, several repetitions, until she started to anticipate that I was go...

 I took Gia out to the field to jump some of the stadium jumps today.  I had a couple of volunteers helping out today, so I was able to get some help setting the jumps a bit higher today (more than just small crossrails and 18" verticals).  I started out warming her up with the same stuff we have been working on in our flatwork - transitions between halt, walk and trot, bending, and changes of bend.  She felt pretty responsive and obedient.  She did get a little quick and unbalanced a few times, and she thought about getting upset a couple of times, but she quickly got herself together, and relaxed, and got back to work.  As I started to point her at jumps, she mostly stayed at the trot, but sometimes picked up the canter.  She would usually come back to the trot, as she is still struggling with her balance at the canter, especially on the turns and down hills.  She trotted the jumps at first, and when she trotted her first big one, and knocked i...