Our Monday GOC ride

The weather held out today so off we loaded and headed off to Muriwai. Just Garbo again and left Maraschino at home. Top piccy is the float cam .... still living it!

We unloaded and saddled up - I was careful to doing everything as I should, in preparation for my course... then we had a little play - jumped over the cavaletti you see above left, a few times which Garbo seemed to enjoy.

Then I jumped on - at one end of the arena he did a little jump/buck on the spot - as he does sometimes, but it really felt like nothing to me so I didn't let it dent my confidence. I just carried on.

OK -so stage one of Game of Contact is Confidence. Here you can see we are getting confidence now - he's taking the contact and being confident about it. Stage Two is stretching - as you can see - he's started doing that really nicely too. My position is improving - I am sitting back when taking and giving the contact with a fluid rein (instead of leaning forward), bending my elbows and every now and again remembering my pelvis tuck.... still got to remember the tummy and ribs. Resting hands getting better too.

So Stage II you can go into trot - trot is a whole story of it's own....  first I'll tell you what I am doing below which is not correct....

The weight is in my stirrups during the rising trot, meaning my leg is lower moving back. I need to be able to rise up without putting extra weight in the stirrups, from my inside thighs up, and with the weight down towards my knees.

I am also leaning forward, my elbows have moved forward, they should be further back, and my pelvis ain't tiling up.... as you can see....

But there is some good...Garbo has a nice contact, there is almost a straight line from my elbows to is mouth, he has a nice expression on his face, his mouth is quiet, his back is starting to come up. Getting there. 

Slowly but surely.

Really loving this.

After all that Michelle let me play with her two warmbloods. It was great fun - they are both such sweeties. Good to get lots of different horse practise in - 6 weeks to go till Colorado.