Yes, I've reduced myself to the equivalent of equestrian kindergarten= rainbow reins. $3 worth of colorful electric tape and I got myself a training aid.
And you kmow what, it bloody works. I TOTALLY ride with my left rein shorter than my right. And when I can straighten out my left side- origination in the hip, that rein feels equal to my right. Funny how that works...or not, because it means I have quite the issue to sort out.
After a rather horrible, deflating ride on Saturday (turns out taking 2 weeks off doesn't actually miraculously make one a better rider...quite the opposite in fact), today my friend and I decided to mix it up and do something fun. So out came the poles and cavelletti blocks.
Ben got his first taste of jumping!
Now lets not get ahead of ourselves- our cross rail was quite, ehm, low, and the majority of them he just trotted right over. But the important thing is that we had fun. I laughed and smiled and felt really lucky to have such a willing guy. He really liked it too - if allowed, he'd go over every time. He does that with trot poles too- he makes a beeline for them every.single.time.
And as if by magic, popping over the cross rails and through the poles put a little pep in his step, and softened his back and our resulting canter and trot work was awesome.
It was just what we needed.
I'm not sure how much of this I will do with him - I am very wary of pushing it with a 4 yr old, but on the flip side it seemed to make the flat work better, so I think dabbling with this might be a good thing.
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