:)

Yesterday Duncan and I practiced our first ever dressage test! Woohoo! He did it a lot better than I thought he would. We did Intro C, because I'm way too bored in intro and and b... even if it is probably what I should be doing. I would probably score and place better in intro A and B, but what fun is that? I want to challenge ourselves, and this way I know I need to work on his canter, need to get a soft feel, and need to get him straight. Something kind of clicked today with the straightness thing. Terry says she moves a horse with her right leg to go right, and her left leg to go left. She also doesn't do an outside reign. That confused me, as I have always been taught inside leg to outside reign, and intend to do that for dressage. What I had been doing was wrong. I was just directing him with whatever way I wanted him to go, and he just followed his head. I realized Terry tells me to have contact, and she tells me to use my outside reign. I was throwing it away, when that wasn't what she wanted at all. So today when I went to make him straight I used more outside reign, and when he reaches that straight point, he gets soft. But with that I need to see when to release. It's kind of confusing, and you really have to have the happy medium. A soft feel, but still have enough contact so that you can make him straight. You want to be able to block him from twisting his body all around, and I always have to remember to keep my hands a little wider, but I try to remember to use some outside reign. But he doesn't really know what that is yet, so I'm not sure how to teach it to him. But still keep him forward, but don't let him get too forward. And don't let him get hard in his mouth, but don't give it away. Oh yea, and then try doing a dressage test :)
Duncan was scared of the other side of the arena today, but I let him go down and look, and then made him pay attention to me, and he did really well! It was hard to have him pick up the canters, but he did it!

Things I need to work on:
Soft feel
Giving when he releases
Backing up wit ha soft feel
Roundness (which comes in with the soft feel)
Straightness

But I am on my horse, and having a lot of fun! I'm super excited for show season! And to start really getting to work on stuff. I'm excited to have a long term horse to go places with. When I leased horses I got to ride a wide variety of horses, but there was never any consistency, so it was hard to progress up the levels. I finally feel like I will be able to do that.