That thing called dressage

Sunday was an awesome girls day with horses, complete even with lunch at a Mexican restaurant.  I rode Mr. Prisoner in our dressage tack (yes I bought a dressage saddle, but that is a story for another day).  I've been so pleased with how he is progressing in our flatwork.

Horse looking cute while I derp

The biggest thing I have been working on is pushing.  Pushing my reins towards him, pushing him for more trot, pushing myself to sit up and stretch my legs down.  Our canter had been too much like a rocking horse (up and down with a tight neck) so that has been the biggest change.  In a lot of pictures from Sunday my reins were actually floppy in the canter, time to swing back to the middle of good rein contact.  There are about three million amazing pictures from that day (thank you Alyssa!!!!) so these pictures are just the few I have edited so far.

Love the colors

He is covering ground in the canter better now, but we still need work on not leaning into the circle.  In the trot I really work to stretch him down and out for the warm up and then slowly bring the balance up as we add in lateral work.

Not even touching the ground, and apparently my finger thought we should flip it off

He is starting to push through more from his hind end, this has been a challenge.  He has always been a pretty mover, but it had lots of up and down without a lot of power.  We are finding that power.

Sitting trot up a hill? Yeah we can do that.

We have made so much progress here that we can now do some successful sitting trot.  His back and hindend are developing which is what is making that possible.  Let's just stop for a second and bow down to Alyssa and her totally kickass photography, she is so seriously amazing.  After getting him thoroughly warmed up in the arena we went out into the field for even better pictures.

*swooning*

Turned out it was a great thing to do, because he tracked up in the canter even more.  There is still room for me to sit up more and stretch my leg more, but let's face it, I'm never going to look six feet tall and slender in the saddle.  Almost 5'4" and curvy, that I can rock.  Overall it was a great ride, and a great time with friends.

Like a fairytale