"He doesn't push off with his left hind as much because he's constantly barreling through your right leg and onto the right shoulder, and he can only lengthen as much as the weak hind leg allows. You have to address that first, practicing the lengthenings without fixing that won't improve the lengthenings."
Massively paraphrased. Obviously.
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| All too happy to plant that right fore under his body. |
So on Thursday, we again revisited the counterbent left circle (really more of a square in the beginning), where we try to get him to both carry weight on his left shoulder and carry his haunches to the outside. He is firmly convinced he can do one or the other, but not both at the same time, and he got really frustrated. He went really well, but got frustrated.
I had another lesson on Sunday, and in this one, we started out with the same thing, but a couple of things were different:
- I made a point to keep his neck long and my hands quiet.
- I tried to do less with his mouth and more...neck reining? To encourage him to move the weight from his right shoulder to his left shoulder.
- I was quicker with my aids, especially on the right.
- I paid really close attention to the positional faults of mine that led to this in the first place: collapsing the right side of my body, and too much right rein.
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| I just want to pick my shoulders up and move them. Anyone else? I'm embarrassed that I ever wondered why my horse piles his weight on the right side. This ain't a bodywork thing, it's a bad riding thing. |
Long story short: it worked. REALLY well. It wasn't easy for either one of us, but we both stayed relaxed and got it, and it really got him on my aids.
And then we tried lengthenings, and we had them. Good ones. She had me focus on letting his frame lengthen just a bit but not get low, and to let him go across the diagonal out of that counterbent circle, and bam. My normally stoic trainer got more excited than I've ever heard her, saying he had more foreleg reach than she'd ever seen.
We also got some bangin' left trot shoulder in, because it turns out the left hind leg thing cripples more than just the trot lengthenings.
More thoughts on this later.
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