Day 3 starting the riding portion of the clinic. We started with classroom and simulations before grabbing the horses. We worked on finding the connection while riding in the morning session. This was interesting because almost all of the horses were disconnected for the most part. Pixie was having a lot of "I" moments, but at the same time I was too because I am just as easily distracted. It took us a while to find our "we" during our ride. I should say ride loosely because it involved more standing and flexing and backing then actually moving, lol. We ended on a good note before breaking for lunch though.
After lunch we focused on the porcupine game while riding and moving the hindquarters. This was a good exercise for me because we were challenged to disengage the hindquarters with no leg pressure. We were only allowed to use our indirect rein. And we had to circle a barrel without leg pressure or direct rein. We had to complete the circle using only the horses hindquarter yield. Needless to say our circle was not pretty and wasn't really a circle, lol. By the end of the exercise we at least got a few good circles both directions. It was a hard exercise and something we will continue to work on. It made us work on our phases 1234 and reset to 1234 instead of just staying at 4. After the barrel exercise we moved on to riding on the rail then yielding hindquarters so the horses where facing the wall. Again this was to be done without leg and indirect rein only. By the time we got to this exercise Pixie was starting to get the hang of things and we did fairly well. We struggled a bit with not going all the way around to line up to the rail (we practiced this a lot for fence opening on the trail) But we got over that quickly.
Overall lots of good stuff on Day three. There will be a lot of things I look forward to practicing not only with Pixie, but with all the horses. I have lots of thoughts about things too, but have decided to put those in a separate post after the clinic is over :)
Off to start day 4!
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