Dressage lesson with Brooksby Dressage: Filming with EquestrianPro.Tv

 So a while ago (in the midst of my essay writing craziness) I had the absolute pleasure of being involved with EquestrianPro.Tv through Brooksby Dressage. It was such an honour to be asked to do this again, originally we were meant to do this in the summer but with Vallu's shoulder injury that flew out the window and I thought the opportunity would never come round again. But it did! And I'm so glad that Lili gave me no warning, she literally texted me the night before going something along the lines of "we are filming tomorrow. You need to do it" because I did not have time to back out of it nor did I have time to overthink about it. 

It was one the best experiences of my life to be totally honest. Vallu was absolute star throughout the lesson, both myself and Lili were incredibly impressed by Vallu's near ignorance of the big ass camera and other camera equipment in the corner. I was mentally prepared for a nope not going anywhere near that spin run off and throw all toys out of the pram reaction out of Vallu. And what did I get?  Ears pricked when he spotted the camera, walked straight towards it, stopped 10 meters away from it to have a look, after which he tried to go have a closer look and nearly knocked everything over!? What a superstar.

 Throughout the lesson we did a lot transitions within both the trot and canter to get him properly engaging from behind and getting me to sit deeper and to be more effective with my hands. There's nothing like knowing someone is filming you to work extra hard! Lili has been berating me about using too much hand (rightfully so) so all I could think about for the first ten minutes was "keep hands still" Currently trot shoulder-in and canter half passes are my top exercises to play with, because of this lesson and just how much Vallu improved in the 45 minutes simply from these exercises. 

 If you would like to see the lesson, go to Equestrian Pro's website and sign up - there you can see tons of more useful videos and training sessions from some of the top pros in the country. And if you're not sure about signing up, there are plenty of trailers to give you chance to see what you would be paying up for! I'd like to thank both Mark and Lili publicly once again for this great experience, it was brilliant and hopefully we can do it again sometime soon :)

Just look at his little angelic concentration face!