Honest Critique

While I am absolutely THRILLED with Goggles, I wanted to get down a few "I could have done better" moments from the show last weekend. And I'll sprinkle in the show photos. 

1. Get off the damn horse. When they were still running the 2' division, that should've been my cue to get off and hold him and let him graze. 

Shot from under the covered where we eventually jumped to the small covered area where we were hanging out during the first of the rain

Under the covered

Dunno if that would have changed his feelings that he was having during our rounds that led to all the bucking, but it would have been better horsemanship. And I know this.

Feelings that we might be a feral llama. I love this picture because he looks like he is posing for the camera. Also SIT on your outside seat bone! Sheesh. 

2. Ride to better spots. JT said that she has an exercise she feels like will help me with this. I unintentionally BURIED him to the single diagonal once, but that oops aside, I was riding him to take off spots that were a little too deep to most of the fences. 

Absolutely buried him, he didn't touch it though in spite of what this picture looks like 

3. Figure out what his 12' stride feels like. Once in the outside bending line we got 6 and a scramble instead of 7. And we got tight to the out of several of the lines. I'm very proud we didn't add because I have managed to do that on this 17.1 beasty, but now we need to figure out the proper pace so I don't have to woah at the last second. 

A bit tight to the out of the 5 stride

4. Praise every moment of softness. I'm not going to be too hard on myself with this one, but he REALLY responds to the neck scratches with the inside rein, and I didn't take every opportunity to do that to try to soften his back during our rounds. Again, I'm not at all upset he had a hump in his back, bucking and that tension are 100% the way he feels his feelings and he had every right to have a load of them. But the more I can soften my seat and that inside rein the second he softens, the more likely he is to stay soft and not buck. Timing is everything

Chaos eye facing the camera

I love his stripe/snip, he's got the cutest face 

I said it in the last post too, but I am SO freaking proud of him. He didn't think for one second about noping out of any of the jumps. He didn't care that the flower boxes were right outside of the arena, and he was just so bold and brave about everything. Once we can get his back consistently soft, he's going to be really genuinely fun to ride.