Schooling the Flying Changes

TC had Monday off after the show, just a hand walk and he got to roll in his favorite spot: the trail course. I remain mildly terrified that he's going to go down while I'm on him out there (because he's a giant pony), but so far he hasn't.

I made the executive decision during my ride on Tuesday to start back with the changes. I've been thinking about when to put them on and I just fucking want them on early this winter. I figure that now is a good time because I know he's going to anticipate and buck a lot, so I'd rather do that now when the weather is okay vs waiting until the spring when it will affect my show season.

And I don't want another show season where I'm delayed. By the time spring hits, he'll theoretically have them on and be ready to be told to do them only when I ask. I usually give it six months of not saying no to change offerings. Six months from now is about when I'd start showing again.

He's not as strong as I'd like him to be just yet, but he is getting
there slowly but surely! 

We warmed up in trot and I'm noticing more and more that he wants to peel off the left rein. So much that while tracking right, he wants to duck in and track left instead. I'm not sure if he's always been like this and I'm just slowly recognizing it, or if this is new.

The trot felt good though, and we did some walk-trot and trot-walk transitions to work on him staying up and in front of my leg during them.

From there, I picked up the canter to warm up, which felt good, and then we started on the changes.

He's so cute, I don't hate the bonnet either

TC has schooled changes on and off. I wanted to make sure that as a young horse, he knew that changing was a thing he'd have to do. So he's familiar with the concept.

I set us up on the diagonal so that I could see in the mirror whether he was clean or not. We schooled them more than we have ever schooled them and he got more and more confident. With confidence came anticipation, because what is more fun than being ALLOWED to jump into the air when you've been told not to do that for a long time. So he started to want to run sideways and with that came some hollow and croup high moments.

My idea is to just put them on how they're going to be put on (obviously I'll put them on clean, I just mean that it's okay if he gets a bit crooked or croup high), then fix them later. When he knows what he's supposed to do, changing how he does them is easy with the clicker. Again what is crucial at this point is to get them on clean.

My left hand is being it's normal annoying self, but he's cute at
least! 

And he did have mostly clean changes! His tendency is to get his haunches left and his shoulder right, so in the LR change, he wants to get late behind and the RL change he wants to get late in front, but for the most part, they were at the same time. I don't mind something late in front because my timing is good enough to fix that right up, but the late behind isn't cool. With more straightness and collection will come better and better changes.

Generally I'm pretty pleased with them at this point, I think he just needs miles and to get less excited about doing them. I figure we'll school them at least once a week for a while to see if we can clean them up before I have to admit to Tracey what I've been doing. That's honestly the hardest part about putting movements on horses for me!