Another lesson, further jabbering

So we're familiar with Bunny's overbending through her neck habit, and with my extreme crookedness. And this is how we are trying to fix it- having her move off my outside aids to straighten her and give her the muscle to balance. This forces me to release my deathgrip on my inside rein (Patti makes me drop it entirely when it gets too bad O.o), and ride square to her shoulders. We aren't looking for bend, to clarify: we want her outside shoulder taking as much weight as her inside shoulder. We'll fix our bend when she can balance her weight (and when I fix my riding... lol)

Inside leg to outside rein, in short, minus the bend.

(and yeah, I am posting super high trying to get lazy pony to move out, hahahaha)

Another thing Patti pointed out: when Bunny drifts, I compensate with my whole body: I lock my whole leg- thigh, knee, calf, heel, into her and rotate my seat to push her over. BUT I am not keeping myself centered- I am collapsing whichever side I'm not aiding with.



Ta-da! This is during our outside-rein turn thing. Whoah, the crooked!



I feel like a lot of this stems from my general hunchiness, as seen in the one above. (Also, darn it my hands are in my crotch. Hrrgh.) I am definitely over developed in my right side as well, so it might be time to start going to yoga with Paige. She's been trying to get me to come, but I've never really given it thought. I'll have to ask her when she's going next. ANNNYWAYS.

Ok, so another homework assignment. We are supposed to work off the rail (not that we ride in the arena that much anyways.) Bunny drops her outside shoulder through the turns and dives to the rail, so I've got to work on riding without that safety net. (This is also why much of our ride looked like this:)




AAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I'm gonna end up on bad_riding, haha.

But there you go, my incessant rambling for the day. Quite exciting. Hopefully, I can get some canter work ( I swear, we canter! hahahaha) on the camera. I hate to canter in the dressage arena because the footing is super gnarly, so inevitably it's never on camera. Maybe I'll set the camera up elsewhere today.