Lesson Jan. 12th 2026 Training Journal Entry #20

 Today we had such a great lesson!! 

We rode in the lower ring with Chloe as our instructor, and we worked on flatwork with a bit of helpful dressage tips!

We started just by warming up at the walk, we each had half the ring to walk a figure 8 on, we did that both ways and the picked up the trot, working on setting our line and riding it. He was definitely stiff to the right, but I think as we worked on the figure 8 it slowly got better but he was still way softer to the left. 

After we did figure 8s we worked on a small middle ring circle over three trot poles, we started to the right and worked a lot on finding our bend and holding it. We did the same thing to the left, he was definitely softer through his bend but had a bit of a quicker pace through the circle. 

We cantered next. We let our trot get soft and then picked up our canter. We started to the left, adding in circles and working on our bend. We changed direction across the diagonal with a simple change and did the same thing to the right, Chloe told me that when were on our right canter circles he tends to fall onto his inside shoulder which results in my ribcage dropping to the inside, so I worked on lifting through my hip, ribs and shoulder and in result of that I could feel him lift off of his inside shoulder. 

The final thing we did was a pattern, trot up the centerline, halt at x, continue at the trot and turn right, come down over the poles and make our pole circle that we did during warmup, then pick up right lead canter at the gate, and cantered a circle, trotted across the diagonal to change direction did the pole circle the other way and cantered another circle at the gate on our left lead. After our second trot pole circle to the left he actually went into a really nice dressage frame before our canter transition where i didn't hold my outside rein enough and he picked up the wrong lead so that's something I'm going to work on in my rides this week.

My plan for Tuesday and Thursday is to work a lot on our flatwork/dressage parts since we have a bit until our next jumper show.

I feel like I learned a lot about bend in this lesson, and I thought I knew a lot about it already! About a year ago I started to learn about bend and leg yielding, I remember Jenna telling me how when your taught how to ride, they tell you pull the right rein you go right, pull the left rein you go left... and that works up to a point, but when you start to get more experienced and want to improve (especially in dressage) you learn bending and yielding. She then taught us to use inside leg to outside rein, opening your outside rein as a space for them to shift there shoulder into as they bend to the inside, and our inside leg would keep them from coming off the rail. I learned how to do that and thought "oh cool, so this is bend" little did I know it would go deeper than that, and I learned that today... Chloe kept telling me to half halt with my outside rein and hold it even more than I was, so I did and I didn't understand why it worked but it did. He became softer through his bend and his head shifted into more of a round headset, I was stunned. After my lesson I went and asked her why it worked so well and she was able to explain it really well for me. Basically it gave him more direction because it gave him a "lane" and his head came down into a frame because his back lifted into the frame and bend i was asking him for and it controlled the balance of the bend I was asking him for.

Sorry I didn't have any videos to add today, I wish I had the videos to show the difference in when I took what Chloe was telling me and put it to work in my riding, compared to before she helped us because it was amazing how quick he responded.