All The Kings' Horses

 I took Gia for a hack out in the fields today.  She was fairly relaxed and obedient.  She did get nervous about a pile of brush, so we approached it for her to check it out.  Once she realized it really was just a pile of brush, she was fine.  We also worked a little bit up and down hills at the walk.

 We had our last drill team practice today, before our show next Saturday.  Gia was a little nervous and spooky, but no worse than usual.  She was unusually grumpy when Dover was near her, but once I worked on getting her attention better, she was less bothered by him.  By the end of the ride, she had settled down nicely.

 Last weekend, I took Gia to the War Horse schooling and show at the Carolina Horse Park.  On Saturday, we schooled the stadium course and cross country course.  She was much quieter for everything, but still had trouble getting through the water on her own.  She was fine after following Ali in though. On Sunday, she competed in the Green As Grass HT division.  Her dressage was fairly good.  She scored 34.4% and started out in 6th place out of 14.  For stadium, she kept all the jumps up, and was fairly consistent.  She did have 1.6 time penalties, but there was no bucking!  On cross country, she also was fairly consistent, although I did have to push her hard through the water.  She ended up finishing in 3rd place overall!

To prep Gia for the show this weekend, I took her out to lunge over some of her jump nemeses in the field.  Except for a sudden burst of excitement, where she decided to start galloping around, she was really good and jumped everything I pointed her at!  Part way through our session, I think she got excited because she was jumping (which she loves), and getting treats each time she went over something.  She started galloping and bolting, so I paused the jumping and just lunged her in each direction, focusing on obedience to my cues until she quieted down.  Then we resumed the jumping.  She went over the brick wall, the flat tires, the bank up and down, the ditch and the corner.  She was super eager to go to whatever I pointed her at, and didn't balk or stop at anything.  Fingers crossed she has the same attitude this weekend (minus the galloping, of course!)

 Gia and I worked with Suzin today on her dressage.  She started out with a really good stretch, and good transitions back and forth between medium walk and free walk.  We did a little bit of working trot, and then we came back and worked on turn-on-the-haunches at the walk.  We found that it was easier for me to feel the movement if I did it on the rail.  I had to get her neck bent about 45 degrees to the inside, but keep her body straight on the rail.  Then I had to move Gia like we wanted to do a shoulder-in, then haunches-in, then back to shoulder-in, until she got it.  I was able to get a few good steps in each direction. After that, we worked on lengthening and collecting the trot.  Her transitions to lengthening the trot were very good, and very prompt.  However, her transitions back to collected trot were a little mushy.  I worked on getting those a bit tidier.  She started to anticipate, thinking we were going to canter, an...

I took Gia to CDP today for a lesson with Charlie.  I started by letting her walk around on a fairly loose rein, checking everything out.  After a few minutes, she started to relax, and get into a bigger, looser walk.  Then I started to put her together and ask for some bending and leg yields at the walk, then trot.  When it was time to jump, Charlie had us work on staying very straight in the front, and not worrying about what the hind end was doing.  If she landed at the canter (which only happened a couple of times), then I schooled the canter, working on keeping her more in the outside rein, and using hardly any inside rein.  She had one canter that she kept for several laps, and did quite well.  Before that one, there were a few attempts, but they either ended in bucking, or just generally falling out of the canter.  Her bucks were minor today, but each time, Charlie had me put her to work with a haunches-in exercise.  By the end, she wa...

 I took Gia to the Sedgefield Jumper show today.  Hayley helped me warm her up and coached us in our classes.  She had us start by just walking on a relaxed (not loose) rein, allowing Gia to look around, as long as she didn't do anything naughty and kept moving forward nicely, which she did.  Within a few minutes, she started to relax.  When I put her to work, I insisted that she stay more focused, but rewarded her often with a relaxation of the rein, and lots of pats and praise.  She stayed fairly relaxed in her trot as well.  We jumped a couple of small crossrails in warm up, keeping the same idea we had at the trot.  Then I asked her to canter, very nonchalantly, and kept the same idea with the canter work each way.  She was a little abrupt in the transition, but then relaxed fairly quickly into a nice rhythm.  We jumped a few more jumps, at the trot and canter, up to about 2'3".  She kept going in the same relaxed manner, so we ...