Visions of what could be . . .

"So how are those transitions coming?" asked my coach as he walked in the ring. He's a brave man >;-P

"Disastrous."

"Really?"

"Well no, only the trot-canter transition is disastrous. All the other ones have actually gotten better."

"Ok we can fix that."

hahaha now I actually accepted that cause M got us there after a long brutal effort (thanks M!) and so remembering that, yesterday Si did ok -- not well, but actually ok. It was better... So there was in fact hope it could happen after all that but we shall see.

So we start w/ a *simple* trot exercise >;-P On a 19m circle (19 cause not allowed to hit the track :) in trot, shoulder fore, collect stride, leg yield out, lengthen stride, halt, turn on forehand 360, trot. Ummm sure. No problem. Sheesh. To be fair, the lengthen stride to halt is allowed to have as many intermediary steps as required - which for us is about half a circle. But all the rest is just as insane as listed *g* We had varying degrees of success w/ any of the items on that list, but what it *did* do was get her stepping under brilliantly and set it up so we could go shoulder fore, collected stride, leg yield out, and sub in canter instead of lengthen stride. And it worked. Correct lead and connected every time. Now don't get me wrong -- tis still a long way from pretty or technically good... But there was no running and she really tried and was reasonably successful. And I was ecstatic. Little things in life :)

"Now she's a little muscle tired cause she's been working really hard." hahaha that so made me laugh. I didn't feel the need to elaborate that this was the easiest ride she'd had all week and what we were seeing was actually residual tired from Tues/Wed -- but the tired part of things was true enough so left it at that.

Then we move on to jumping -- the wheel of death. hahaha made slightly more changeling w/ "start counting down 8 strides out". Sheesh. However, I have to say the exercise was actually reasonably easy. Drilling the hoofprint game has made my eye fairly accurate and Superpony has amazing natural rhythm so seeing spots from a mile away isn't particularly brutal and after our wonderful canter flat work she was willing to give me either lead over the fence easily enough. Now our right circle *may* not have been "round" in the geometrical sense of the word *g* but she went pretty well where she was supposed to in a good pace AND we managed to fix our balance issues.

Anyways -- was an amazing lesson that showed flashes of "what could be" -- so I'm pretty happy about that :) Cheers!