...a little too late for Lumber River, but better late than never, right? We started off with a little flatwork, me in my Antares, and did lots of stretches first. To get the stretch starting from the back, I thought "nose to chest" and when he softened, a gentle push with my seat and legs to get him to stretch to the end of the rein, and when he popped up, thinking "nose to chest" once again and then the gentle push to the end of the reins. This works pretty well for Sam - it gets him to soften through his poll, which he is not always good at doing, and then gets him to push through the stretch and lift his back and start to swing. For some reason, he's switched stiff sides on my and he's now much stiffer on the right than on the left rein. It's probably because I love to throw away that right rein, so I had to concentrate very hard on not allowing with my outside rein (Sam's very good at talking me into giving him just one more smidge of rein), especially when I'm on the left bend. However, when I'm adamant about not giving it up and sending him into the outside rein with my inside leg, he is fairly quick to soften and lift his back. We still play that game every time I ride him, though.
In the canter, I had to think about slowing the trot down (think "tuck", as Denise would say) and then moving him forward into the canter, and making sure that I didn't tip my upper body at him - easier said than done. Then, I remembered I had a whip so when he didn't take the depart and started to hop around with his head flung up in the air, I tapped him and the next time, he had a fairly nice depart. On the right rein, his departs are pretty decent. On the left, they're still a bit hollow, but his balance is so much better on the left rein than on the right.
I put my stirrups up two holes and then we started to do some hand-gallop sets. He was pulling in the beginning (not hard, but pulling) and when I tried to let him out a notch and soften the rein, he just ran faster. Since we were in the arena, I didn't want him tanking off with me, so I bridged my reins and pressed them into his neck. Once he did a few laps, he started to settle down. After four laps one way, I checked my monitor and he was at about 150. We walked around and he pulsed down to the low 80s very quickly - within a minute or so. Once he was down in the low 70s, we picked up the canter the other way. We did this a total of four times (that's 16 times around the arena) and each time, he pulsed down fairly quickly, but the respiration was up a little too much for my comfort. After the last canter set and he pulsed down, I picked up the canter again and then cantered him through a little gymnastic (that was set for Oliver) and worked on coming out of the turn without sitting down, and keeping the quality of the canter up to the jump. We also did turns to the rolltop, both backwards and forwards, out there, working on getting him to jump from behind instead of rolling over his shoulder. The jumps were tiny, so he didn't respect them much, but I can feel when he jumps over his shoulder and when he actually lifts it.
Something I noticed - when cantering on the right rein, he tends to bulge left and push against my right leg, which is weaker anyway. I find that my right leg tends to swing a little more than my left, so I've got to work on strengthening it.
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