FIVE One-Tempis

FIVE. FIVE ONE TEMPIS! FIVE IN A ROW!! WHO IS THIS HORSE??

This one?

I went out to ride today after giving Rico a day off yesterday and jumping on Friday (we did three skinny overturned muck buckets in a combination of short-ish one strides). I wanted to school the piaffe and passage. I have a lesson with Heidi on Thursday of this coming week, so I figured I'd get that out of the way so I could work on the basics coming up to the lesson.

He was superb! Easy transitions in and out and stayed much better up in front of me than he has in the past. I still can't get the quality I got with Heidi but there was not one single doubt in my mind that we could make it through at least one of the three piaffe/passage tours in the I2/GP tests. The I2 has two, the GP has three, so he still needs to be fitter.

He was so good, I decided to play at the canter and he was hot to change. I was just going to do some forward and back, working on roundness, but every time I half halted, he slipped into the other lead. So I went with it! If he wants to change, let's change.

Thankfully not like this anymore!

I started with a whole bunch of twos on a circle. This is helping SO much, he is so easy to change now and I'm much better about keeping him straight because he HAS to be in order to change to the counter canter.

I then started down the long side with some couplets one step apart. So a one, a two, a one, a two. I did those around the corners too and he struggled at first but then stepped up his game.

Then we did three in a row... four in a row... FIVE! What an amazing animal! He's only ever done four in a row and they're hit or miss.

My issue is that I tend to go too fast through them, I swing my legs around like I'm a crazy person. Today I counted out loud. One two one two... And then swung my legs to that rhythm. I KNEW IT. I knew the horse was thinking I was this complete idiot for swinging my legs so fast and just humored me by giving me a few each time.

Tomorrow I ride at the crack of dawn so I can get to crossfit and then go horse shopping with my mom. Then it's just two more days until Heidi. I'm excited to get another lesson. We've been emailing and decided that the September 7th Yarra Yarra is a good first Grand Prix to aim for. That's one year almost exactly from Rico's first Prix St George. Craziness.