This week in lessons

This week in lessons I am bringing back the Hillside Challenge!

This week's challenge is a flat work challenge. I am going to attempt it on Izzy today and will try to video to give you an idea of what we are doing and how. The challenge will incorporate the ideas of pushing your horse around rather than pulling it, and also rating speed to make steering easier.

For jumping, we are going to continue to work on finding the straight line to diagonal jumps, and also to finding the straight line while doing inside turns. This means keeping control of your horse's outside shoulder through the turns so that your horse feels in balance coming out of the turn, and so can jump the fence with its hips behind its shoulders, and able to see the jump from both eyes.

The keys to being straight are:

 - USING OUTSIDE AIDS TO PUSH THE HORSE AROUND THE TURN RATHER THAN INSIDE TO PULL IT INTO THE TURN.

- RATING THE HORSE'S SPEED SO THAT IT IS IN BALANCE, AND ABLE TO BE ADJUSTED TO BE MORE FORWARD, OR MORE BACK.

- BEING STRAIGHT IN YOUR OWN BODY.

- And perhaps the hardest of all.... PATIENCE

It is important when turning that your horse should turn in around your inside leg, and not push out from your inside leg. I need to figure out how to illustrate this as it is key to so many things for jumping and dressage.

Also note:

Geldings MAY be moving pens this week. The east pen is dry so I will be putting 3 geldings out there, and taking Wiley and Rocky out of the isolation pen. (Rocky will be thrilled to see the last of Wiley!). I have not yet decided who will go where, but will likely be making the moves on Wednesday. Talk to me before then if you have any requests.

Karen