Things Are Changing By The Day

I drove down to Port Williams in the late afternoon to ride Rogo. It was sunny and -2 C, although pretty much dark by the time I arrived. Friday night of a holiday weekend - the barn was almost deserted. Two riders were finishing up, so I was all set to have the arena to myself for the second half of my ride.
This is rare here, but that isn't a complaint. There are usually lessons going on all day everyday through the week, and into the evening. You can show up and Sue will fit you in if it's at all possible. Sometimes this means riding with one or two other people, which is a good exercise, but most often my lessons are individual.
Back to my ride - I warmed up with free walk, doing some loops and crossing the diagonal. Then I trotted serpentines wall to wall and did lots of trot circles.  I think I was doing a better job of the circles, but I won't know until I ride them with Sue watching. As I mentioned in my last post, I can't see or feel that they were wrong, so until I can it's hard to fix them. I thought about them a lot since my last lesson and I think that I was really having a mental block. I think I've been riding in such a way that I was over correcting a previous problem and in doing so, thought the problem was fixed. Then when Sue brought it to my attention, I thought the old problem was back,... anyway, I'll spare you the navel gazing details on this occasion only :)  (hmmm, maybe it's too late for that) but if I'm right I'll be well on my way to getting things corrected. Fingers crossed.
On to canter. I gave the canter aid when we were doing a nice engaged trot, and... full, instant, braced, stop. Damn. Move forward, get him straight, give the aid, stop. I can't believe it. We're back to that again. I gave him a few kicks and a whack with the whip, but he wasn't convinced he should canter. This made me tense, so when I did get him to canter apparently I didn't let him go forward enough and he stopped again. Jane Fraser was watching and she told me to let him go, push him forward as soon as we cantered. I tried it and yes, it worked! He was nicely forward, but not over the top at all. This nice forward canter cleared up any problems we were having and we went on to do the best canter work he's done since he started the 'canter rebellion' (associated with insisting on engagement / using his hind quarters).
I could push him up into my hands and then move him in and out on a circle, lengthen and shorten, change his bend, speed up and slow down, etc. I know this is elementary, and even at that it needs much more work, but it's a big improvement. To make it interesting I asked him for canter walk numerous times, and also for a couple of canter halts. I knew from some of his rebellious behaviour in the last few weeks that he was quite capable of a canter halt, so why not do it occasionally? He'll go from canter to walk with a couple of trot steps, and he'll actually do canter halt with just one step to halt, and from quite a light aid (I use my voice too). Who knew? Maybe I shouldn't ask for it yet, but oddly he seems to like doing it even when he's beautifully forward and he didn't try to do it on his own after the initial cantering problem. Maybe he'd like reining? We could develop this into a slide? My 17 hand reiner :)
So lessons learned from tonight:

• remember to ride the circles from tangent point to tangent point, using eight points
• use the inside leg and outside rein to do this, with inside rein and outside leg as needed
• Sue told me that canter is going to push his Rebel Rogo button for awhile; don't sweat it and just work through it
• re the above, riding nicely forward right away in canter gets him over it
• doing lots of trot canter trot transitions makes him want to canter non stop :) Guess it's less work than the transitions

After the ride I had a delicious supper of ribs, salad and red wine with Sue, Jane and working student Maria. It was a great evening. Now I'm in my trailer and getting ready to crawl in bed with a book. Another ride in the morning and then home for New Year's Eve. It will be a quiet one of cooking, eating, sipping wine and watching movies with Mom and Doug.
Happy New Year everyone!