Sadly, no media for this one. But a much more positive post.
Sunday, I got up early, even with the time change, and dragged myself to the barn for a 10am lesson. I did oversleep a little, and had a hard time keeping my focus on the road and not in my head, but I made it without incident.
I was further thrown off a bit by not seeing the normal brass colored baucher bit on my bridle, which made me think maybe Riley was borrowing it, so I waited for Ginny to be done with her lesson. I watched part of it from the wash rack, where it appeared they were doing gymnastics. I love those. Maybe I'll get lucky and get to do some of those myself!
When Marcy got back she pointed out that my bridle was there, she had just returned the brass colored bit to it's owner, and Violet was now going in a plastic baucher. Same bit, different material. Still saves on having to buy one.
Got up and on, went for a walk with Ginny and Riley and got caught up a bit on what was going on with both of us. I met Marcy up at the warm up jump ring, which someone else was using, so we started our warmup on the grass next to it.
Our warmup went pretty quickly from walk to trot and into canter, working on keeping Violet pushing from the back and channeling the energy from back to front. At the trot, we worked on using the counter bend to develop a wall, even though there wasn't one.
The goal for today's lesson was truly rhythm. At the canter in particular. We appear to be mastering the walk, light sitting trot to canter transition that keeps her in front of me and not braced against me. So that means we work on the rhythm once we have the transition. To do that, Marcy wanted me to count. Apparently I allow my count to get faster as I have more things to concentrate on and I lose the rhythm. So she started counting for me, a lot slower than I was counting. It kind of threw me off at first, because I was trying to bring Violet's rhythm down to Marcy's count. But that was not the point. The point was more to get my brain to slow it's roll. Use the count as a metronome and that will carry eventually to the rhythm, but don't necessarily try to slow Violet down to match it. Yes, it is that jumbled in my brain. Anyway, I must have figured out how to do it, even if I don't get it enough to be able to explain.
After that, we worked on simple changes. Violet is the queen of these, actually. She pretty much knows the routine. She doesn't quite do a skip change, but if you can get her to break to the trot (sometimes more difficult than others), she'll happily change. When jumping courses she will sometimes blow through your request, because she so loves the jumping. The goal was to do it with rhythm slowly and not rush through it.
We moved from the grass outside the jump ring into it, where we worked on poles. Not quite the same kind of gymnastics Ginny was doing, but gymnastics all the same. There were two poles 7-8 strides apart and I was to canter them with rhythm, do a teardrop loop with a simple change if needed, and canter them back. It was a little disconcerting that there was someone there also jumping while I was trying to work on my exercises, but that's just because my brain says "warning, there is an oncoming horse" instead of just looking out. Anyway, when we got that done in a nice flowing 7 and 8 (depending on which direction we were heading), then we added one around a bend. So, we would canter the first pole on the short wall, 90 degree turn to the left and over the other two, tear drop on the end and back the other direction.
Once, we were balanced enough that she picked up the right lead canter going back. The other times, I had to do a simple change. After that, we switched it up so that we did the one on the short wall, skipped the first in the line and went to the second, tear drop back to the one we skipped, back to the one on the short wall. This was a little more difficult, because I had to keep my eyes up in order to ensure I got the outside shoulder on the line I wanted to the next pole. Also, coming back through where there was a right turn to the short wall, we had to do a simple change because we were counterbending to and over the pole. By counterbending, it makes the simple change easier, because her inside shoulder is actually free to pick up the correct lead. It seems a little contrary to everything we do in the dressage ring (pushing into the outside rein) but it works for Violet. And I'm sure there is some nuance in the explaining of this that I'm missing. I need to get much better at writing down my take-a-way's from the lessons as soon as I'm done, because I know I'm missing a bunch.
After that it was an easy walkout around the cross country, clean up and head home. Violet was wonderful, and it was a treat to work on some coursework without actually going over the fences. This coming weekend I will be taking two lessons, so that's exciting. Oh, and Violet is now duly registered with the USEA as "The Divine Miss V" in preparation for her rated show debut in a couple of weeks. I know it's not her originally planned show name of "My Secret Garden", and kind of messes up the name of my blog, but this one fits her better. Everyone already called her Miss V. And she is simply Divine. And maybe a little bit sassy like another redhead:
