covid challenge #2

1- 10 minute walk on long rein

2- Trot and canter warm up with light contact, same as Tuesday.

3- Flat exercise for Wednesday - (Shorten your reins to full contact for all exercises after our warm up). Trotting Spiral In and Spiral Out to Canter. This is a great exercise to supple a horse and to find good balance. It is also like a valium for a nervous horse! Watch the video and notice that she does not counter bend the horse to spiral in. However, sometimes to keep the horses shoulder in front you must use the outside rein. Keep even contact in both hands and keep the horse's head steady and move the body in or out not the mouth or head. If the horse pivots his hind end when you spiral out keep your outside leg on to keep the haunch in check.

4- Today is the second day of the schooling week so we add a bit more work. Let's do a little pattern work ( I will post pattern drawing too in the comments for reference for the visual learners):
a. Trot down the centerline and halt at X.
b. Do a 3/4 turn on the haunches to the right.
c. Do a medium canter circle to the right back to X. Keep the circle about 20m.
d. Keep cantering thru X to the wall and turn right, halt before corner and do a 1/2 turn on the haunch to change direction.
e. Pick up your left hand canter. Stay on the rail and start a large circle at the end of the ring and grow into a very forward canter. Bringing the canter back to X.
f. At X do a simple change to left lead and turn left at wall.
g. Transition to trot and once the trot is nice, halt.
When you are working with patterns and come across a problem area, work on that issue before finishing the pattern. Use the pattern to show you your weaknesses, break it down work on them and then go back to the pattern. Work until you can negotiate the pattern fairly easy or at least with great improvement over the first attempt.

5- 3 minute long trot, same as Tuesday
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6- Finish with walk around yard.

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