Flying Lead Changes

Well I had my weekly dressage lesson with Robyn yesterday. It went really well. Not nearly as humid and hot and yucky as it was last week. Overall though, I haven't had to work this hard in my lessons for awhile now. They really are challenging, and I feel as though I am learning again, which is wonderful.

I rode Joey, and older mare. Thoroughbred maybe? i dunno. For the most part we did a lot of serpentine work. Bending and such at the trot, a few leg yeilds to the wall, which felt horribly crappy. But I did em so it worked out ok. She's been having me do leg yeilds to the wall at the trot and then once we get to the corner pick up a canter. So we did that too. We also just worked on cantering circles 20m versus 15 m, so as to not rely on the wall. I keep turning my head too far so it messes my cantering up. Its from my jumping background. At the farm that I started on, I didn't have a lot of instruction I just sorta rode whoever I could, and we would race around and jump things and just have a good time. I did some eventing, and so those few jumping lesson I did have caused the head problem.

Joey knows a lot of tricks, and is rather well at doing flying lead changes, so Robyn said I could give it a try. Its a very "big" movement if that makes sense? it really threw me up. I didn't know exactly what to expect the other few times I "tried" to do them it was very messy and complicated, and I never actually felt the flying change. But Joey knew the second i swapped bends what i wanted her to do and she just did it. It was a great feeling, I hope that somewhere in the near future I can be so good as to be able to easily do all that stuff :).

So that was my lesson, Glo was nice enough to take a bunch of pictures so i'll post em :). I did want to mention the other excercise that i learned a couple lessons ago that I really enjoyed (wasnt online so couldnt post it)
Anyways I was riding Boo, and she has wishy washy steering from having so many little kids pulling on her to go this way and that instead of using the reins correctly. Anyways, so we were tracking to the left and she kept falling in, so we started working on riding squares, and when we got to the corners we would do a turn on the haunches, well not completely, because we didn't stop and turn, but it essence that was the movement. We did it to engage her hind end and so she would listen to my inside legs better and such. Anyways when we started to go to the right, she was falling out. Which is really odd after her falling in, the other direction. So when we did squares to correct this in this direction we did turns on the forehand. Okallies well that is about it for now. pictures to come
kim~