Anyhow, that said, after I fulfilled my grim obligation, I got home at about 19:30, and was in serious need of some Hippotherapy. So, I tacked up Zigs, and mounted up. Before I get any further, I'm going to detail the exercise program I'll be using to get Zigs in shape for the horse trial:
- Day 1: Hack around the neighborhood
- Day 2: Dressage, focus on one or two specific items
- Day 3: Trot poles and Two-point
- Day 4: Interval training
- Day 5 Dressage, focus on different item from Day 2
Since I hacked around the neighborhood yesterday, that means today was Dressage. I decided that today, we were going to work on trot circles, as they have always been a big challenge to me, and I've noticed that Ziggy has started majorly cheating on them, and since I would really prefer not to see, "For the love of God, the Dressage test said CIRCLE at A. Not a SQUARE!" written on my Dressage test comments, I think it would probably be a good idea to start working on those again. They went decently well, but I was having a really hard time getting Zigs to bend for the entire circle. I'd get about a quarter to a half of it, and then he'd try to totally straighten out and do this weird counter-flexing thing. I did a bit of spiraling in and out on both reins, but I will freely admit that they were not the roundest circles Dressage has ever seen. I really need to get some cones, and set them up in a 20 meter circle so that I can learn to visualize how big one actually is. Ordinarily, I'm pretty good at judging distances, but for some reason, I suck at eyeballing a 10 meter radius. Part of the problem is that right now, I don't have an arena to ride in, so I don't have the convenient sides to help me see the width. But, I need to be able to see that without an arena for when Psycho Pony shows up in the Cross Country phase, and I need to circle to defuse him.
I've put those on the shopping list, along with a wristwatch with a stopwatch. Right now, I have to take one hand off of the reins and take out my pager to get a look at the time. That works OK when I'm trotting, but once I start doing serious interval training, I really don't like the idea of taking one of my hands off of the reins to check the watch while I'm galloping. What can I say? I'm a bit of a control freak.
Speaking of galloping, once the trot circles were going reasonably well, I did a little bit of canter circles. Those went considerably better. It seems like cantering is easier for him than trotting is, because I had very little trouble getting him to bend on both reins, and my circle was a lot rounder. Of course, that could just be from the practice I did at the trot. ;) Zigs had worked pretty hard by this point, so we took a long walk break. While we were doing that, I practiced shortening and lengthening his stride. It wasn't 100%, but I could definitely feel the difference when I asked him to shorten, and when I asked him to move out. When I could, I closed my eyes as I was giving my cues to help me evaluate my position, and focus on feeling the difference in stride. It worked pretty well, but I think that's something best done on the end of a longe line, where you don't have to worry about your horse suddenly deciding that the right rein is boring, and that it really needs to go to the left. To cap things off, I worked on the cruising canter versus the collecting canter positions. It wasn't 100% successful, but there were very brief moments of brilliance as far as the collecting part goes. The cruising part, he's all about. ;) Which reminds me, a friend of mine linked me to an awesome T-Shirt that I must have.
Tomorrow is trot pole work, and it's really late, so I need to wrap this up and get to bed.
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