It was all half pass and by the end I was about to half pass the fuck out.
We started with the trot work. First, Tracey was unimpressed by my ability to ride a good trot. She said "at the canter, you're always making sure you've got a great canter but at the trot, you just ride whatever he gives you." This is SO true. I am obsessive about having a good canter. When I pick up a canter, that damn horse better sit down, get up into the bridle, and do his work. When I pick up a trot, I'm like "eh, good enough," and go on with it. Tracey had me working my ass off to get a good trot and let me tell you... when we started our lateral work, that horse was on FIRE! He was such a star and sooo easy to maneuver.
Once as we were done kicking my ass about the quality of the trot, I told Tracey that I was struggling a tad with the left half pass. The right is great! I feel like I have a lot of control in that direction over the steepness, the bend, the cadence, etc. The left is still like... throw yourself across the arena and hope that it resembles a half pass enough (I'm exaggerating, we've received 7s on both sides but the left is MUCH harder).
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| Left half pass... looks pretty but feels terrible :( |
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| More of my acrobatics while half passing left |
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| Canter half pass only marginally better |
She had me start with riding shoulder-in down the long side and then riding a half circle onto centerline into haunches-in. The right was easy, the half circle rode seamlessly between shoulder-in and haunches-in and I had the utmost influence over his shoulders and haunches in both. The left was not so good. I couldn't control his shoulders in the haunches-in, so instead of haunches-in, we had shoulder-out.
AND THAT'S WHEN IT ALL CLICKED!
If I'm riding a half pass and don't have control over his shoulders, I won't have any control over bend, steepness, or anything important. When I feel like I don't have bend, I pull on the inside rein which further pops his shoulder out. IT ALL MAKES SENSE!
Once as I realized that, the half passes were super easy. Except that I have a listening problem and kept doing them at the wrong starting point. This continued into the canter.
We moved on to the canter half pass and Tracey got after me for letting Rico swap leads too fast. Every time I do the zig zag, I need to start with canter half pass to quarterline or centerline, then go straight a bit, THEN do the change.
Other than that though, changes were all good (only one kicking change in each direction!) and the half passes got progressively easier and easier.
We had a tiny bit of time left so we looked at the piaffe and passage. Passage looks good! Except it's a tad quick in the tempo and Tracey hinted that it was more of a glorified cadenced collected trot than a passage at this point (shhh). We think the next Alfredo clinic will be very helpful!
The piaffe looks good but only after I got told off for doing too much. Once as Rico and I had a discussion about WHO is working their ass off to support WHO and WHO needs to sit down and do his work without his dumb rider getting too involved, it was great! Rico responded to the lightest touch and WOW it felt amazing. Tracey said it would get even better since right now the amazing feeling I'm getting is from Rico knowing "that he needs to do a two beat trot-like gait on the spot" and "he needs to learn to sit and do this ~glorious hand motions~ instead."
All I know is that the piaffe is so much more fun now!
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| He's come a long way since our in-hand work while he was at the beginning of his rehab in 2011! |
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| Accurate |
