March 17

Yesterday we shared the arena with two horses, one was a mare who is coming into season and was tied in the arena. TBM did great. He was much more free in his movement and felt much more forward and relaxed. Although we had a hard time not falling in to the right. We spent a fair amount of time reinforcing the idea of moving AWAY from the right leg, instead of INTO it. This seemed very foreign to him! I had Tanya, the lady who was teaching lessons, check to make sure I wasn't completely crooked and hanging off to the left or something, because I was starting to doubt! *laughs*

Today we had the arena to ourselves again, and TBM had a lot of useful energy. We changed our warm up a bit, and I think it is a good change. I wanted to focus on this softness to the leg, and the idea of moving AWAY from pressure, instead of into it. So I started with work from the ground. A few years ago, I had the pleasure of auditing a Karl Mikolka clinic, and one of the exercises he used was full passing. In the western world, this is often called a side pass. The idea is like a full blown leg yield, and it tests the horse's understanding of moving away from the leg. I started this on the ground with TBM, just as we have started the turn on the forehand from the ground to introduce the concept of moving away from the leg. He was resistant to this idea at first, because he didn't quite understand what he was supposed to do. He caught on very quickly, though, and was very soon giving me wonderful full pass from the ground away from the left and the right. I also started to introduce the idea of engaging the hind leg in response to a tap from the whip. He also picked up on this really quickly. We spent probably 10 minutes on this before I mounted. Once I hopped on, we did some long rein walk, then I picked up the reins and did some full pass from the saddle. It took a bit for him to make the connection with what I was asking him undersaddle and what we had just done on the ground, but when the light bulb went off, he was golden. After we had gotten some very nice, soft, relaxed full pass away from the right leg, we went to the trot, and that was very nice. Threw in a bit of canter to freshen the forward, and back to walk and working on full pass from the left and right. Not a very long workout at all, but one I found to be productive. At the end, I also did some leg yielding in the walk, and he staying NICELY straight through the shoulders, not bulging or falling at all. I was VERY pleased with this. I also found myself sitting up more and more, which is only making his job easier.

Tomorrow would be a good day for a trail ride, we will see what is going on with the weather. Today was still kinda windy, but the roads weren't ice like they were the day before. So hopefully tomorrow will be good.