Trisha wren ~ Connect With Your Horse

May 2007 – riding

Please excuse the faces I am making in my concentration!!!

At this stage we are still in walk; until he feels like he can balance himself consistently in walk, maintain softness, and not motorbike around the corners we won’t be trotting. I’d also like his backup to be a softer more consistent diagonal beat.

Hunter is accepting the contact much better (instead of sucking back off of it), and stretching down more. There's still plenty of scope for his hind legs to come through more.

Near the beginning of the session (pic 3) he still didn’t have the hang of the whole backwards thing… but by the end (pic 4) he’d just about figured it out.

He got softer and softer, and much better bend! We did lots of S walking, very few straight lines. Lots of rotations to help him keep rebalancing himself. In the last 2 pics you'll see me combing on the reins, which helped him to stretch and release more.