Once again I've learnt that riding is not easy, and never straightforward. For the last 2 weeks I just haven't been able to 'click' with Vallu, and he has been so spooky and wild that I've felt a bit useless. But now, *fingers crossed* we're on the right track again.
This weekend Vale View is hosting the High Profile dressage show, and so new decorations were placed around both indoor arenas. After about 10 minutes Vallu managed to get over it, and act like a normal horse, trotting past without constantly staring/spooking/tensing.
It's also been very windy, which makes the doors to the indoor arena rattle loudly and suddenly, which means that Vallu has been exploding and taking off with me lots of times. But today we got into our own "zone" and Vallu was able to ignore the sounds, which makes me so proud of him! Maybe we do have a chance of training properly indoors throughout the winter?
We worked on trot and canter shoulder-ins, and it was great to have mirrors placed at both ends of the arena so that you could see how it was going all the time. I learnt that in trot it feels like it's on 3 tracks, whereas Vallu actually isn't doing shoulder-in properly at all, and in canter Vallu easily does it too much, so I have to really concentrate on giving the smallest possible aids so that I don't end up over riding it.
Shoulder-ins in canter are really good for improving our weaker left canter, it makes the canter really bouncy and uphill! Since the left canter is weaker, it also means that I really struggle with riding canter pirouettes to the left, but after doing shoulder-in, the pirouettes were nearly textbook style! What a great feeling!
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