Whoops and a bit more Ooh

Today I approached our schooling session with trepidation as we all know pride comes before a fall and I was quite pleased with him yesterday.

I again lunged in full tack and Vienna reins working equally on both reins and was happy with movement and attitude.

I held back for a while asking for the increase and decrease of pace just in case it was a one off and decided to work on a how slow can we go in trot. Unfortunately on his weak rein I was so focussed on encouraging him to trot slowly I had a serious attack of elbow misplacement.

Tori has shown me how to carry the stick of death (Charlie's name for the yellow lunge whip) in my elbow so that I can feel it touch the ground and know where it is unfortunately I got carried away and the end of it must have gone somewhere wrong. We had a mini explosion for which I apologised but it was quite a nice mild explosion.

We got our increases and decrease of pace in trot but I didn't think they were as good as yesterday however I am a bit greedy for improvement.

Again hardly any jumps into trot mostly very nice transitions.

We removed Vienna reins and mounted. I only rode for about 15 minutes but was very pleased. We tried to remember to get our contact correct. Had nearly no head tossing and had some nice transitions to trot.

I did a little shoulder in on both reins in walk and I swear blind I could feel his inside hind step under him.

We also achieved trot circles with no falling in or out in fact I was so pleased with him that when I got a nice transition in walk to halt I dismounted fast before I could ask too much a mess it up again.