Wednesday, October 21, 2009

10/20/09 The Fourth Day

Ransom was now on his fourth day of riding. I varied the saddle & all, but the work remained the same. It was time to get down to business. No more funny stuff, no more goofy bad transitions. I tolerated nothing.

Every ugly transition up resulted in an immediate transition down & a retry. Same for down transitions. We did probably four dozen or more transitions in the 45 minutes I rode. I gave him only a brief warmup. It was mild and decently warm outside, gentle winds. This and the short clip left no excuses for tense muscles or disobedience.

I didn't ride through either test in full. I rode what I believed were the sticky pieces from Tuesday. Lots of in and out of canter, and a few trots down to walk. In the walk breaks, he didn't ever get a loose rein. Transitions from collected to free walk & back.

We accomplished a lot. The longer I rode, the better the transitions got. We had some *awesome* trot to halt at X. I didn't feel like I had to hang on his face to get it, and while they weren't fantastic, they sure were a lot better than they've been.

Tonight, we rest... Countdown to Sienna, 5 days

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