March 5th 2026 Lease Ride Training Journal Entry #27

 I worked on dressage again, it's definitely his weakest element and needs the most work.

I worked on trot to walk, walk to halt, trot to halt, and walk to trot transitions in our warmup, asking him so stay forward in the transition so he wouldn't fall behind my leg, I also worked on softening through the transitions so that he wasn't barcing, and he was so much better and softer.

Once we had worked on our transitions, I worked on some trot and canter circles asking him to move into contact and bend.

We ran through the starter test once, and it was one of the nicest dressage tests we've done together other than when I used his new bridle on him the first time.

He was super accepting on contact and his transitions were so much nicer in our test, I think it was a really solid test. I let him be done after we ran through the dressage test, we've been focusing on dressage so much lately I went out on the track so he could canter and strech his legs a bit without being asked to be in a frame, he took about two strides of canter before saying "forget this" and took off down the long side of the track, i got him back under control and into a nice canter before we walked off and went back to the barn.

I scrubbed his rain rot with antifungal shampoo after my ride, it wasn't too bad so I'm hoping I caught it early enough so it won't spread... I will be at the barn Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, plus my normal days next week so I will keep scrubbing it when I am at the barn and putting the coat defense powder on after as well.