First Journal for my Dressage Class

Yesterday I rode Duncan. I tacked him up in block barn and he was all nervous because he was by himself. He gets really high headed and freaks out when he can’t see his friends. He is more herd bound than he ever used to be. After I tacked up I went down to the indoor to ride. It wasn’t a class or club time, it was just Kelsey and I riding. I did some ground work where I worked on getting him in tune with me. I also noticed that when I do ground work in a rope halter it takes basically no pressure to ask him to back up, but when I have him in the bridle (just on the ground) he is more braced. This is probably my doing, but I try to start with asking him to back up with me on the ground. This helps so that I am not on him to mess up with my seat, and he can see that pressure means to back up.

After the ground work I mounted. I walked him around a few times on a loose rein to get him to warm his back up a little. I try not to do too much with his head down for a long period of time because then he wants to stretch the entire ride. I instead implement it as a reward after a job well done. I picked him up with some contact and asked him to move his hind end over and get his butt moving off of my leg. He is getting soft with that if I have a bend, but need to improve on keeping him straight and having him just go off my leg. After that I did some trot work. I worked on transitions and made sure he was listening and would trot-walk, trot-halt, trot-halt-backup smoothly. It was not as crisp as I would have liked, so I continued doing that. I also noticed that I need to not keep so much pressure with my leg. When I take it away he stops going forward. This is also completely a bad habit of mine, and I have trained him to only go when I beg. This is something I need to consistently remember. After the trot work I asked for a right lead canter. That is getting stronger. After that I tried to collect him and ask for left lead - no luck. I then remembered reading something from Joe Walter a few days ago that said this, “Whenever I’m working with a horse, whether it’s on the ground or in the saddle, I’m always comparing the sides. What’s he like on the right compared to the left? In the past, I thought if he was better on the right than the left, then I needed to really work that bad side. But I’ve found if I work the good side instead and get it even better, pretty soon the bad side becomes the horse’s relief.

The bad side starts to feel good to him.". I also read something from Ray Hunt that said if a horse won’t pick up a left lead he works on the right more. Then the horse is so tired from the right that the left is his relief. I want to try this approach with Duncan. I also realize that it is in part my awful timing that limits him even more in picking up the left lead. However, it has gotten better and I was able to get it at home often.