Transitions

• Razz’s direct transitions upwards have improved but in the last lesson with Hayley I was struggling with the downwards transition on the right rein. I am not sure who is tensing first but either me or Razz is getting tense about the downwards transition and this makes the other one tense. To be fair to Razz … its probably me

Lateral work

• Razz enjoys going sideways more than going forwards so in the canter lateral work he tends to go sideways easily but loses forward impulsion in the canter. Hayley was consistently telling me to soften my hands both while going large and in lateral movements. It was really quite noticeable that Razz went forward more easily (even in lateral movements) when I softened my hands. If I can work on softer hands that restrict him less to solve the problem with a loss of impulsion in the lateral work.
• Hayley asked us to do leg yield which developed into leg yield to the centre line changing to half pass which was then further developed into half pass all the way across the school. Personally, I found it much more difficult to do leg yield changing to half pass because you are seem to be constantly changing flexion from one side to the other. When schooling by myself I have just been coming off the corner and going straight into either leg yield or half pass either to the centre line or all the way across the arena. For me, this is simpler with less changes of flexion and I will build up to leg yield changing to half pass in the next few weeks.
• When doing leg yield or half pass to the left I was using my right leg strongly to get him to move to the left. In order to “put my weight behind” my right leg I was leaning to the right. Leaning to the right makes it much more difficult for Razz to move to the left because my leaning to the right places my body weight to the right which if anything would encourage Razz to move to the right. Hayley was understandably shouting at me to stop leaning to the right. I need to work on this to stop this bad habit.

Aids

• Hayley told me to hit my own leg with the whip. After clarifying that this wasn’t a punishment for me she explained that it helps to get the horse forward off the leg because the sound of the whip on your boot gets the horse more responsive to the leg since the whip aid is coming from the leg and not from behind the leg. I have been using this trick while schooling by myself and it does work
• I must also learn to start rewarding Razz when he does something well. I am very good at using my voice when he does something badly but I neither pat him or praise him with my voice if he does something well. He has to know when he has done a movement well by rewarding him somehow.