Better English

I rode English tonight and he was much better than he had been. I did start him in my western bit and got him working WP for a bit and then when he was working well for me I asked him to extend his trot and started posting. It was a TON of work to get him to extend to a real working trot and NOT to transition into a lope. On the bright side of that, he was really easy to get him to lope off during the entire ride so perhaps my drills the last few days have made some good progress. I switched to my English bridle about 30 minutes in. He did a lot better than I expected. He kept his frame and I kept checking him by halting to see if he was carrying his weight correctly. He was for the most part. He actually does better halting than he does doing downward transitions. Just asking him to come down usually looks really messy. He sticks his nose up and bounces around. He doesn't do this every time so I suspect he does this when he gets strung out and isn't using his hips. He had a few moments at the canter that were less than pretty, but he never rushed and he only fought me for one short moment. He wasn't leaning on the bit like he has been and I was able to give him enough rein to stretch out. Most of the other horses were still passing us even when I thought we were really trotting out, but I'm going to claim that the were all at least .2 to a whole had bigger than Jr. :)

I'm feeling better about showing English after today, especially because doing a few English classes in the morning will help burn some of his energy before the western classes in the afternoon. I don't have to decide until that day anyway. I'll see how he does tomorrow. I can already feel that my legs are tired because I spent some time in two-point at the beginning. Not a lot of time since I haven't really done that in years but was reminded by a very trusted friend that I need to be doing that to help build my seat. I'll keep trying.

I'm going to start on my western blouse tomorrow and then spend the whole afternoon at the barn since there's no school!