Trained

Six weeks has flown by and Jonna is once again in Perth to help me spend all my money.

Coolie had his flatwork lesson tonight, and oh my goodness it was a good one. For anyone reading who is particularly into dressage, this is going to seem rudimentary and boring. To me it is amazing!

We started with a quick catch up, where I filled Jonna in on our recent competition results. Then we got cracking.

We started with self carriage again. We have been doing our homework so we just refreshed it and got Coolie really off my leg. This has got a lot better since my last lesson, but we still need to work on it.

Then we jumped into shoulder in. We are not too bad at this, so we just tuned it up, and made sure it was in self carriage. A couple of repetitions was enough to get it and it was so much better than our last lesson. We had 3 tracks and self carriage consistently.

Then we tried travers and it fell apart a bit! After watching us, Jonna had me move Coolie shoulders out first, and then keep his hind quarters in. We were losing the control of the shoulders so  by making sure they were controlled at the start of the movement meant that we kept the 3 track better. We just have to get the self carriage now.

Jonna and I had a discussion about half pass and I admitted that while I know what it is, I don't know how to do it. Jonna talked me through it and then I had a go! It was HARD, but first I moved his shoulders in shoulder in, keeping his eye firmly on the letter we were aiming for. Then I asked for travers, and it took a bit, but we got a few steps! Very exciting and lots more homework.

Attempting half pass

We had another chat and Jonna broke down that once we get travers, we can get half pass, and once we get half pass our flying changes will start to happen.

We went back to travers and this time we got the angle and the control of the shoulders a lot better.

Our homework is to walk. Do all the things in walk. Get it good in walk and it will be good in trot and canter.