30. august 2012 (DL)

So I was supposed to have a really great dressage training with DL since she was in a good mood. Somehow however it turned into jumping. I loved her in warm-up. She was remarkebly soft to the hand. I have to state the fact that what is remarkebly soft with Lady means noral strong and steady contact with any other horse. Anywho she was great. Responsive to the leg. I could "play" around with her pretty nicley. Put some more pressure on with the inner leg, flex the inside rein, hold on the outside and drive her in with the outside leg. Whooaaa she was freaking working. Well mostly we did that in canter. In trot we tried some lengthend stried while keeping the collection. Well they were acceptable but not perfect. But I was starting to feel her responding to my hands. Felt good.
With jumping we started with 60-85 warm-up jumps. Both sides just something easy. Keeping DL cool from the head, no rush, no hurry. Was pretty nice. Tried to fix the distance on the oxer with different stride lengths. It worked pretty well. She was a tiny bit resistante torward the inner rein at the beginning with smaller turnes but it got better. Needed some more leg on her. The main thing today was 3 jump on 3 different heights 110/130/140. Okey so 110 was pretty good. Keeped the slow pace up first jump, gave her a little freedom to look at that and over we went. Second time tried some longer and more impulsive canter. Screwed up big time. Didn't judge the distance well so we ended up with an option A) going a bit early  B) making half an extra stride under and let her do that one on flat. I know how bad I suck with close flat ones so I preferd taking it earlier. But I guess I was dreamign of fluffy unicorns since I did not tell the horse to go earlier. So offcorse she waitid for me to say what do to...and when I was still engaged with my little unicorn dreamy thingy she got confused and had to make the decition herself. Her's was to go down flat and then jump. So I just travelled with her thinking how damn sutbid I am. No worries...fixed the distance the third time and got some pretty great jump again. Then 130 which was the best height today. She was alerted, listened to me. So basically all DL had to do was jump. I was pretty much able to do all the rest for her which ment telling her the tempo, keeping the line. And I was constanyl remembering what E. Smiley had told abotu the approach, take off, air phase, landing, and get-away. So yeah DL had to do her job and she did it perfectly. Then came the 140 which was good in general. The first jump we got a little bit too close thanks to my small turn but it went okey. On the second one we fixed our mistake, kept her a bit more shorter and she did the jump perfectly. Third one we took down. But since the impulsion and take off in general was freaking awesome I was too sadisfied with that. Next time she just needs to remember to keep those legs up =)

110

130

140