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Jazz's injury changed my whole mindset on riding. I guess it just gave me a lot of time to think about what I really wanted to do and what I would do without her! I was already planning to take her down the Dressage journey but I have to say my mind really opened up to it when I realized I probably wouldn't be riding her. When God closes one door, he opens another and I have been blessed to spend some time riding with my neice. She has graciously offered to let me ride her horse and not that others have not offered their equines for me, she actually has this horsey caught, tacked up, and knocks on my door and invites me out to ride with her. What a blessing this has been!
We have been discovering the joys of Dressage: a classical development and training of the horse and rider. I have found Opie to be very responsive and willing and at the same time able to point out the mistakes that I make on every horse I ride. He responds to both my direct and indirect requests and as such teaches me the cues I give when I don't mean to. The patterns help me ride with purpose and encourage me not to give up on a gait when I get tired and often just let the horse stop.
Yesterday, we rode warm-ups and apparently he realized I was tired and just stopped and I would say, "fine, go ahead and stop." When we started doing patterns I knew exactly when we wanted to stop, so I pushed myself to keep going, as well as, asked Opie to keep going. Another benefit of using exact patterns for training is you know exactly what you are suppose to be doing and for how long. So you also know when you aren't doing it.
The first day Opie kept surprising me. We'd be on a circle at the working trot and all the sudden we were walking. So I asked him back up into the trot and he responded fine. The problem was our working trot circle was a trot-walk circle. The next time we worked on that pattern I began to sense when Opie thought about stopping, I asked him back up into the trot. I thought, "I felt that-- you thought about walking didn't you?-- keep on trotting." What a major breakthrough! We actually made some pretty nice working trot circles. I actually felt the horse--- it was like "Ha...I can read your mind." What a boost in our partnership!
Well, when I am not riding. I am studying the patterns and movements in classical dressage training in anticipation of putting my new found knowledges to the test. This is pretty exciting stuff!!
