Dressaging

So I hinted from my lesson a couple weeks ago that Fuego definitely does have an extension somewhere in his big, gangly body. Additionally, I have milked this image enough which makes it clear that homeboy 100% does have an extension, and it's quite nice, even if this was taken as he was amped up heading to a fence.

After convincing him to move forward in that lesson, he came into our hack the next day and was game from the very beginning. I opted to use the Dressage whip because there was one lying around in the cross ties and I was too lazy to go grab my crop from my car. It was a cold, windy evening too. The thing about Fuego is that you can genuinely never tell if it's going to be a crazy day or not. He's certainly taught me the meaning of riding the horse you're on that day. Even as lots of brisk, cold weather has come through Florida lately, his behavior hasn't changed consistently with the weather. Even at the start of this ride, he was pretty spooky and looking at everything as we walked on the outside of the Dressage ring. Once we got into the letters? Completely calm. Weirdo . . .

No media from this ride, so y'all are just going to have to believe me.

I set up four poles in a circle of death so that I could use the two on the rail for the majority of the ride. Again, I don't like how he hesitates to singular poles the first time through. I think continuing to encourage him forward the first time and praising him afterward will help build trust which I can leverage in other, more tenuous circumstances. I've also changed my approach slightly with flatwork and don't typically start by doing multiple laps in one direction anymore. I'll typically do one or two laps each way to establish pace then move onto figure 8's. For him, once we moved onto the figure 8's, I integrated the extension and boy did he really come through. He has a lot of suspension in his trot and nearly left me behind. He did begin to anticipate a little, and while I do want him to eventually be snappy off my leg, the snappyness should come as a response to me, not memory. I started slowing down the transition from working trot to extended, and he only got better and better.

We did 15 mins straight of working trot, extended trot, cantering on the rail, cantering on circles, and lots of transitions before taking a 3-minute walk break. The next 15 minutes started with leg yields at the walk, which I know he can do physically because he uses it to avoid cantering to the left. He did get overwhelmed with the task at first, so again, I broke it down and slowed things. He can get from the quarter line to the rail pretty quickly in the leg yield, so it'll be something we can keep working on in the future.

After yielding, we cantered some more because I definitely need more canter time. The transitions certainly could have been better. That's all on me though. My canter transitions have always been, uhh, questionable. To work on this, the majority of the trot work on the second part of this ride was in sitting trot. My core needs a ton of work, and that plus continuing to open my hip and sink my leg down will help. Surprisingly, the circle of death was the easiest part of the whole ride. We did it a couple times through each way, and he was right there with me.

He's such a good boy.