April Schooling!
Or trying to that is...
[Click on a pic for a bigger one]
April nice and relaxed and light in walk.
Here I am trying to get her to step under more using my seat. She's stepping under quite nicely, I think this is as far as she'll ever manage in walk.
As you can see wrapping my legs around April like a wet towel isn't a good idea unless you'd like to be in the next county.
Halt. She is resisting my hand here. You can see her huge underneck muscle bulging!
Excuse my position by the way, I'm trying to sit up straight for the camera - but my warped brain thinks that means lean back. Grrr. I also look down too much which i really am going to have to sort out because the muscles on my shoulders and around the sticky out bit of bone at the top of my spine are really sore at the moment.
Feeble attempt at reinback! She is resisting abit here too. She finds reinback hard coz she has to weight her hindlegs alot, something we need to practice! I'm also not helping her coz I'm not leaning forward enough.
Trying to work April 'deep' in trot to get more effort from behind. She finds stepping through from behind very difficult in trot, and she'll never manage to actually 'track up' I don't think.
It has taken me along time to get her to 'trust' my hands in this 'deep' position and in 'long and low'. She used to find it very hard to maintain and would dash off hollow as soon as I gave more rein. She is obviously overbent here, but she is trying hard to work through from behind, is light in the hand and calm so I'm not worried.