An attempt at a dressage test

Yoshi got new shoes Wednesday along with a very positive report from the farrier. He actually had a bit of heel to take off on the left foot! Woohoo!!! He was very good for the whole thing until the last 5 minutes. Then he started putting anything within reach into his mouth... the farrier, me, a halter hanging on a hook. Just like a toddler that was just DONE. So I slowly fed treats and we got through it. Funny horse. 

Yesterday

Yesterday

6 weeks ago

6 weeks ago 

Overall, his feet are looking MUCH healthier and I can see the hint of a heel. Hooray!

Today we rode through Training level test 1. 

Definitely rough in places - in particular the halts and obviously the left lead canter that wasn't, but y'know. First attempt. 

When this is my position two strides before a down transition... Yeah no wonder the halts sucked! 

I do not like how much bracing in the stirrups I'm seeing in the video though. This was the first time I'd set up the pivo in a few weeks, so I'm going to work on fixing the bracing and then see how we look in a few days.

Bracey bracey

I finally brought out the tripod which made the pivo much happier. It had been wandering off in the middle of rides and then sticking in the woods for the rest of the ride. I apparently still set it a bit too close to the edge of the ring though - it loses us at the canter a couple of times. 

May have something to do with our racehorse canter still

Overall, I'm so happy with how he's going. We're playing in and out of the dressage ring and he's just getting more and more consistent. We have another dressage lesson on Monday. I'm going to try to nail down weekly or every other week lessons ASAP. 

I cheated, and we jumped a log, barrels, and the liverpool the other day. He's perfect. The solid jumps made much more sense to him than poles, he set himself up really nicely for them.