Feelings, So Many Feelings

After working with Carmen I let her back out to the paddock to relax before the lesson.

It was an interesting lesson.

She started off with lots of energy and looking around. What is interesting is that the areas that were NBD during our groundwork, continue to cause some anxiety when being ridden.

This is definitely habit and one that doesn't get me too bent out of shape.

We walked around and then picked up a trot. I am sure that her saddle needs some adjusting (I have a call in) and so I let her warm up to it. Carmen was still getting herself distracted, the work in the ring was not keeping her occupied enough.

getting distracted by the equipment outside the ring.
Still looking pretty though

So Shanea asked me to do a 4 loop serpentine. I was riding it and Shanea kept telling me to turn sooner and I was getting confused. Finally she said 'think of it as 10 m circles'. And then I knew I had to stop.  See, my ring is 60 m long so to do a 4 loop serpentine it's at the 15 m marker not the 10. Once we cleared that up we could work through it.

As we worked Carmen's energy picked up and she was ready to go. She picked up a canter when I didn't ask but I let her roll with it and we flowed along. It allowed me to work on our trot-canter-trot transitions.

After a brief break we went back to trot and I asked her to cross the ring at B she balked. I put my leg on and she gave a big buck. It honestly seemed like she felt I was being too hard and I'm sure my balance was on the front of the saddle and pinching her.

So I just laughed, brought her back to walk and let her get more comfortable. Clearly, she had feelings and one of us had to be zen. I spoke about what I thought was bothering her and we decided to take it down a notch.

We worked on some leg yields at a walk. As we worked, Carmen began to relax. And then wanted to go forward into trot. I waited a bit and then let her roll forward.

Leg yields from left to right were easier then right to left.  She likes to lead with her haunches so worked on that. Here is Carmen expressing her feelings about being made to go to troll corner.

But we worked through it. Carmen can get quite fast and unbalanced so I've been working on that.
In this video you can see that she's speeding and falling out of balance. I turned her into a 10 m circle and slowed her down. From that she's more balanced and, funny enough, less spooky in the corner.

But we finished with this leg yield:

This is the one we finished on.

I was happy with this lesson and how we dealt with things. It seemed to me that Carmen is learning that I will  listen to her when she tells me she's not comfortable- mentally or physically. Which is allowing us to work through it. I am being less intense, which is also good.