Battle of the Leg Yields

Gah, one week until our dressage show and Jetta's refusing to do nice leg yields. She cannot, will not and you can't make her do them nicely.

Besides that, everything else seems to be coming together really nicely. Her upward canter transitions are lovely (though they do occasionally take a try or two to get a nice one), she's carrying herself better, bending nicely, etc. etc. It's just those awful leg yields.

After having a ride start out really nice with her on Saturday, only to end badly once I started asking for leg yields, Sunday I decided that the focus of the ride would be leg yields. A brief warm up and then we got right into them. I've been doing them at the walk first and being very strict on how she does them, hoping that getting them perfectly at the walk will transfer into the trot. So far, no such luck.
 

Poor tired bad pony

Of course she did just go into heat which may have some influence on her less-than-optimal attitude, but I just wish I could get through to her that leg yields really aren't that big of a deal! Just wait until we get to doing half-passes. Oh boy. 

Sunday though they did definitely improve a tiny bit. We had a near perfect leg yield to the right which earned her a lot of praise and a nice long walk break. But the left leg yield is definitely a lot harder for her. She doesn't want to move over at a 45 degree angle, more like a 60 degree one. She doesn't want to stay on the bit but would rather stick her nose in the air. She doesn't want to move her haunches over and she doesn't want to keep her head straight. We ended up getting a slightly better one by the end, but I sure hope she gets her act together eventually, because I know she's capable of doing a lovely one if only she would listen to me and follow directions, lol.

Warming up in side reins

One major problem I have is when she doesn't move her haunches over, I tend to bend her too much to the inside to make them move over, which is incorrect and actually inhibits her overall ability to move laterally. I'm working on it, but it's tough!

I was hoping to get a lesson in before the show, but it looks like I'll have to plan one for after instead. We do have at least one more dressage show planned in the middle of August so I'm hoping to get a couple lessons before then so we can get some outside help on what we're having trouble with!

Plan for the rest of this week is to really school both girls in dressage to get them ready for the show and somewhere in the middle of the week I plan on taking at least Jetta for a trail ride, but hopefully a friend is going to come along and ride Misty so they'll both get a little break.

But at least she's pretty, right?