Am I the only one who felt like singing Christmas Carols this weekend?


The snow looks so lovely and the horses are able to play in the paddocks without the ice and mud being an issue! Rob and I took the puppies for a walk out back, and it is nice to see the hay fields covered in a thick blanket of snow.



Of course I don't have to drive anywhere in this...but at least it happened on a weekend right?



The weather looks like it should be decent this week; perhaps more seasonal than we are used to, but not bad during the day.



The Shelley clinic is next weekend, and there are still a couple spots if you want to ride in it...or pay for me to ride your horse in it ;)



This week in lessons:




For jumping we are going to do a grid again. I think the grid last week was good at giving some of the greener horses some confidence and letting them jump the jumps on their own a bit. For more advanced riders on more seasoned horses...we will make it more exciting, don't worry! Oh, and if you want me to video you through the grid, just bring your video camera out and remind me, and I can do that too!



For dressage/flat, we are going to be doing more leg yields. I found an exercise I really like that helps to correct the tendency to let the horse's lead the leg yield with their shoulders, and it sets the rider up for the aids required much better than using the quarter-line; we are going to leg yield off the diagonal! It is easy to do, but perhaps hard to conceptualize, so I drew a diagram:

In this example, you would be coming to the right (counter clockwise) and turning as though you are going across the diagonal (grey line). Once on the diagonal line, ask for the new bend (right in this example), but keep your old posting diagonal, and keep your right leg back. Then look slightly more to the left, and push your horse laterally while maintaining the angle more or less true to the original line.


I like this method, as there is less preparation needed to set your aids up for the leg yeild, and I think it helps the rider think more about the entire horse moving sideways as the hind quarters seem to have further to go; if you let the shoulders lead too much you will end up perpendicular to the wall!

So we will see how that goes.

We will also do some work on lengthening the stride at trot, remembering the lengthening doesn't mean faster, it means LONGER, so the entire horse's spine needs to stretch out; the stride needs to have more reach, and so does the horse's neck. Many times rider's ask nicely to start, but then let the horse fall on its front end part way through the lengthening; you may need to re balance every few strides to encourage the horse to keep pushing from behind, and you also need to keep an active inside leg and rein to keep the horse from leaning and rushing on its forehand.

Karen