As much as Nilla would prefer to stick to jumping, we have a show coming up and I’d rather not have her completely embarrass me. Given her recent behavior, I expect to be embarrassed, but it’d by nice to be only mildly embarrassed.
Our recent time off has done neither of us any favors, but our canter has suffered the most. Nilla’s so bad at canter that she really needs to be in good shape and constant practice to manage a decent canter. Since she’s neither of those right now, our canter is, shall we say, flailing. The transitions are especially explosive:
My husband helped me by setting up four poles in a 20m circle. I alternated between cantering around and over the poles as Nilla was occasionally frequently too excited by the poles.
We did get some great trot work from the poles.
We did get some slightly calm and content catering near the end. And then we rode down to the water tower and she cantered like a soft, flowing horse and not a drunken rodeo bull. I really need to figure out how to get the same canter I get on the trails in the arena.
It's the difference between balancing on the straight away, which equine and equine-esque animals are good at, and balancing on the circle, which they have to learn to do.
That's probably part of it. The trail does have some twists and turns though and she handles those so much better than any turn in the arena.
Good luck! Love that Nilla gets so excited about poles!
bahahah shes so grumpy looking. i love her ears.trot work looks great though!
She was basically pissed the whole time since I wasn't letting her gallop and jump the poles.
She loves poles. She would prefer I let her gallop and jump them rather than do dressage, but she was very excited.
Lol that's one expressive mule!
would it work to canter first out on the trail and then go into the ring? Maybe she feels more free there or maybe you're more relaxed.
We have tried that and it does not help. She would really just prefer not to be an arena horse.