How hot was it?

So it's been burn your face off hot the last few days. Even today that was supposed to be the start of the cool-down in temperatures was around 95 degrees. I headed over to Pam's this morning bright and early to have one last lesson before the show and Pam heads off to teach a clinic.

Key points for today:

• When she bobbles in the contact move hands wide and add leg to increase the trot. Then just do it sometimes because you can.
• Turn from the outside aids on the serpentines to work both sides supple.
• Leg yield FORWARD w/sideways. Ride the base of the neck straight, don't overbend the neck either way. PS: Forward.
• After walk break (did I mention it was hot?) at the walk turn on the haunches. Ride from shoulder out position, walk don't spin. Get the shoulder out then turn using outside leg pulsing, it keeps her from stepping out.
• Walk to canter right: This was much better than monday (thank goodness) I really worked on keeping her straight, lots of body focus. Ran through some serpentines, keep the canter the same, same, same all the way. 10 meter circles, keep the jump and turn from the outside leg. Don't just look up but look through her ears, this really helped to make a better circle.
• Walk to canter left: ride the haunches in on the 10 meter circle but out on the straights. Don't let her ride herself to haunches in where-ever she wants. Widen hands to drive her to the bit.
• Trot: She MUST be taking you somewhere. Must, must feel like she is thrusting you along. Get the trot don't just go through the motions. Several trot-walk-trot transitions, from your seat not from the hand. Leave the hand alone in the down transitions, e.g. trot to walk and canter to walk. Don't slam her into the transition, hold her with your seat into it gently.

Phew, we were both a sweaty mess after that. And it was barely 9am when we were done!

After that it was a daze of trailer packing, traveling, trailer unpacking and set-up at UNH. After letting her settle in a bit we went for little hack to check out the rings and warm-up area. 'Dea walked quite nicely to and in the warm-up. Then as I took her over to walk around the outside of the rings a truck with a garage style back door showed up to bring stuff to the show office. There was much metal banging and otherwise frightening noises from the trunk. There was much high level movements (piaffe and caprioles mostly) from 'Dea. So after grabbing mane and steering her from thinking running across the grass field would be a grand idea, we trotted. I had planned on just a bit of walking around but that went out the window. She was much more settled trotting and we just made sure to trot both directions around all of the arenas.

A little more work for her than I was thinking of doing but we weren't out there too long. Hopefully she'll still have plenty of gas for tomorrow. 

Beauty rest