Dressage lesson

Lily and I had our weekly dressage lesson last night. After warm-up spirals, Judy had us working on the circle, and trying out the concept of pointing my outside hip towards Lily's inside ear (to keep her outside shoulder from popping out), while pushing her with my inside leg to my outside rein. Magic! When I got it right, she dropped her head and her back came up. We were doing entire circles with her like this. Judy was smiling from ear-to-ear and extremely impressed. She could tell we'd been doing our homework!

I paid my show entry fees last week and went ahead and purchased the Whinny Widgets for Introductory Level. I started looking at the tests, and was kind of horrified when I saw test C-this is the only one of the 3 Introductory Level tests that includes the canter. I was talking to Judy about it, and all you get to do is one circle in each direction at the canter. This requires major precision. So we worked on that, and it was hard-the first couple of times I "chased" Lily into the canter while trying to get her to pick it up exactly at C, which resulted in a pogo-stick canter with her head in the air that left her nervous and jiggy. So I would bring her back to a walk, let her relax, pick up a trot, get her to relax again, then quietly ask for a canter. Judy counted 3 strides between the canter cue and the actual canter, so I cued her 3 strides before C, and finally got it on the 3rd attempt. It was waaay better! Smooth transition into the canter, and smooth transition back to the trot. Judy has me exhale when I ask for downward transition from canter to trot. I'm not really sure why this works, but it does, and it works well-Lily comes out of the canter into a nice balanced trot. All I have to do is breathe out deliberately.

Under the setting sun afterwards, we worked on shoulder-in, haunches-in, and leg yields at the walk. All of them are looking (and feeling!) better. Judy worked on details of my position so Lily would be able to perform all of these movements more accurately. I know Lily can do anything I want; I just have to know how to ask for it. Dressage is so detail-oriented. So much more detail-oriented than any other of the equestrian sports. I honestly don't understand how some people find it boring, and I still wish I had had a good dressage trainer available when I was learning to jump in Puerto Rico-we had no dressage trainers on the island when I was learning to ride. It just never ceases to surprise me how the tiniest detail can make such an enormous difference in how Lily understands a cue. And then riders complain when a horse doesn't understand or they have training issues-it really, really is all about rider error. If your horse isn't getting it, you absolutely must check what YOU are doing first. Example: during leg yields, Lily's front legs were going faster than her hind. Judy corrected me, and I discovered that just pointing my outside toes up brought my leg and body into position so that Lily was suddenly leg-yielding correctly.

At the end of the lesson, Judy congratulated me. She had been smiling the entire lesson, watching and instructing us. I lost count of how many "Good jobs" we received! She said that any other trainer would've never given Lily a chance, to see the way she used to be when I first started working with her. Judy confessed that even she herself, when she first tried Lily out, thought that she'd only ever be good for the hunter arena; never dressage. To watch Lily today, she admitted that I had most definetely made her change her mind-Lily and I have proven that she is more than capable of being a good dressage horse. Judy said that only I could've done it. This made my week. :)