Lesson with Juli

We had our fifth lesson with Juli yesterday. As always, it was a huge success! All I really wanted to focus on was the bit and improving our freestyle. 

We made some good progress with the bit! I actually put the headstall on him. He chewed and chewed and chewed but there wasn’t any freak out! And I was able to take it off once he left it alone. I can’t wait to play with some bit isolation stuff. My only concern is which bit to use. I wish it was possible to let him sample a ton and pick out the one he likes best…

Playing with one of Juli's bits. 

He had a surprisingly great attitude today. I was really, really, really happy with his faces. He cantered four laps then when I stopped him, he gave me two eyes and two ears until I asked him to come in. Awesome. Then we did play with some figure 8s. I have been way to direct-line about them. Instead of just figure 8 after figure 8 Juli told me to switch it up more to keep him asking questions. Duh, I should have known that. Within a few minute his faces were looking much better and best of all when I went to bring him in to me, he started to turn back towards the cones so he definitely had the pattern on his mind! Can’t wait to play more with that!

Look at that ear on me! 

Once I got on Juli showed me how to disengage his hind end while riding. I am not really sure why but this blew my mind. I don’t think it is a hard concept to understand, but feel like I might be a little more confident/comfortable with it if I saw someone do it. I might look up some savvy club DVDs to see what I can find. I may need to just play with it more…maybe it will just click?

She gave me some great tools for when he pulls his snotty, LBI tricks to get out of things. She also pointed out that I go right to phase 4 with my carrot stick and keep it there when riding. As much as I would like to think I don’t do this, I know it is true. I don’t think he realizes what phase 4 means. I need to make phase 4 mean something to him in order to get a response from phase 1. Maybe this brings me back to my ‘snappy’ lesson? I think so!

So my things to keep in mind: Make cantering circles a game, don't be a direct line thinker when playing with figure 8s (or anything else!), practice partial disengagement from a walk and trot, and make my carrot stick phase 4 mean something! Being LBE, I want to go play with all of that right now! But, I think we might just enjoy the sunshine today :).

A special thanks to my boyfriend, Stephen, for spending the day at the barn with me and taking so many wonderful photos!