Awesome Dressage Lesson #21

I snuck out of work early so I could get a lesson in before it was dark. And boy am I glad I did. I was a little worried it'd be too cold since it went from 60F yesterday to 30F with a pretty low windchill but it turned out pretty nice. I did a tiny bit of ground work before I groomed and tacked up. Tricia put the bell boots on Axel and off we went. We might have to call them "magic bell boots" because he really picks up his feet when he wears them. We worked on some basic trotting, extending on the long sides and slowing down on the ends. He started to really get moving when asked and once again offered a canter (on the wrong lead). He seems to pick up the canter when I put pressure on with my outside leg. I assume he wasn't trained for the canter cue so it's kind of fun that he goes for it. Too bad he never picks it up correctly and we miss our turn. We had a really nice canter in the other direction as well but he gave it up before the turn.

We switched to crossing the diagonals at X so he could work on bending both directions. Axel really started to "get it" then. He'd extend really nice on the diagonal, make the turn collected, and then pull out of the second turn and extend right away. After several rounds we worked on some transitions. The first trot to walk transition really blew us out of the water when he kept his rear under himself and really went into the walk nicely. Our walk is still slow and it's not quite an easy task getting Axel into the trot, but he's getting better. And finally we worked on backing up a couple times inbetween. He's really coming around.