Lesson Jan. 19th Training Journal Entry #21

 We got to do another lesson with Chole and we had a very good lesson!

We started by warming up walk-trot on our own, doing lots of circles changes of direction, serpentines, ect. He felt really good at the trot, moving forward without being strong, and keeping a consistent pace. We each cantered individually, and Sindri felt really round in his frame. we started right lead with a walk to canter (I'd never done a walk to canter with him so it had a few trot steps in there) I worked on keeping my inside hip from falling in during or right lead canter circles, and it helped him not fall onto his inside shoulder. We changed direction across the diagonal with a simple change, and did the same thing the other way adding in some circles here and there.

Once we were warmed up, we did an outside line of trot poles, doing a halt to trot transition then trotting through the poles and halting straight. We did that both ways before adding the judges line of two cross rails after our halt.

 We trotted through the line both ways before moving on to adding in cantering the line of cross rails. We picked up canter after our trot poles instead of halting straight, and then cantered down our line of cross rails. Chole noticed that he tended to swap out to his right lead over the first jump when we were tracking left, we tried a couple of times to correct it but she didn't want it to take away from the rest of the ride so she told me to work on it as homework. ( I started to connect that he did this at the jumper show as well)

 We did the same thing off of our right lead (he didn't swap out) and he rushed a bit the first time we went through so she told be to sit up a little taller but get off his back, she thought when i was sitting down in the saddle and pushing myself taller it might be driving him forwards rather than asking him to come back to me and get under himself, and it worked.

Instead of rushing for the 4 strides
he sat back for the 5