None Too Pleased

Today I did not have a good ride on Jetta and I was none too pleased. We've been diligently working on the stuff that JB had us do in our lesson but instead of getting better, things are getting worse.

In pursuit of a slow trot and a nice canter transition, I now have a horse that's leaning on the bit, heavy on the forehand, has lost all impulsion and swing in the back and anticipates a canter transition every time I ask her to step over. Not how it's supposed to be. About halfway through our ride and getting so frustrated I basically just said screw it, we're not working on that any more. We're doing things my way now. Back to a normal trot speed trying to get some more elasticity back, lots of spiraling in and out on a circle to get Jetta to lift her shoulders, lots of trot-halt transitions to get her off my hands and paying attention to my seat. We ended much better than we started out but it was still frustrating.

I feel like we've taken quite a few steps back in our training just in the past two weeks following our lesson and I'm not happy about it. I had just finally gotten Jetta to maintain a perfect, floaty trot and got her soft and responsive to the bit and now I feel like everything's messed up. We have another lesson on Wednesday and depending on how that goes we may or may not be a third lesson with this trainer. I may just stick to having some jumping lessons with this trainer and no more dressage lessons - I'll leave the dressage to TS where I feel like every time I ride with her we get a dramatic improvement.

Anyways, after being completely frustrated with Jetta I hopped on Tux for a nice de-stressing ride. I didn't even bother to take off his blanket, we just putzed around the arena bareback, got some of the most perfect leg yields ever and then at the end, spent some time clambering around on his back to see if he was ok with it. He totally was - he stood stock still while I brushed my legs all over him and finally stretched out on his large rump to take a nap. This horse is like a couch.

How can I be upset with this face to snuggle?

Both ponies also got their feet done this morning so now they have pretty toes. Tux still has a bit of thrush going on in his frogs but other than that I got the trimmer stamp of approval - both of their hooves' are looking very nice and Jetta's got some nice concavity going on. Still can't get over the transformation her hooves have taken - who would of thought that the TB with crumbly, flat pancake feet would have such strong, rock crunching hooves today?