Monkeying around

Clover felt even better last night. Monkeyed around with changing up how we warm up, instead of 8-10 minutes of walk before trotting on a longer rein, we did 5 minutes of walk with more contact gently asking for bend/flexion and then up into forward trot and canter-trot transitions. It loosened her up and got her going so we could do more work on the aids. On the rein. In the aids. Through the bridle. On the bit. Whatever the proper nomenclature is to describe the effect of the horse’s acceptance of the aids and working through, supple-ly.

Flatwork--dressage, sigh-- is coming along, but still need to work even more on forward in response to leg as well as suppleness. And the canter; doing canter-trot transitions on a longer rein with a lighter seat seems to be helping. Up and down transitions in general are helping--remembering to do them and also do more bending when things get a little stuck and above the bridle.