Slow Growth

A day or two of spring runoff made interesting patterns in the sand ring.  It was something to appreciate, and then have to fix!

The last time I rode with Jen Hamilton in 2017, she wanted Ludi to have a better understanding of changing his canter lead. On course, if I put my leg on to change, nothing much would happen other than he’d race away, further unbalanced.  Before the pandemic shut everything down, I was still considering what level to show him at in dressage this year, since we had shown at First in 2017 and he was schooling at lot of the Second Level work last year, but I knew he wasn’t strong enough yet.  The key to all of this was to further develop his collected canter.

I'd been blessed with clever Andy who figured out flying changes pretty quickly, particularly when we were jumping and he had lots of impulsion.  After him, Professor DiMaggio was always faithful with his changes and he taught me the tempis; multiple changes of lead in a line.  Ehren has a natural change in reaction to my leg.  Ludi, however, has to have the movement taught to him step by step.  We keep training despite all events being cancelled.  I chose not to jump during the health emergency.

There isn't much instant gratification in dressage.  Building and training an athletic horse, and keeping their good spirit intact, takes hours of riding and weeks (and weeks) of training before the effects are confirmed.  John's been great to occasionally video our schooling, and the plan is to knit the highlights together some day.  There's some ugly, there's some genius, and there's lots of weakness as we take a few minutes to teeter on the edge of Ludi's capability.  He keeps improving, and my fascination with the wonderful life sport of dressage grows.