All the things

 Today we packed a lot in. ;) Which was rather silly as it was SOOO hot again. Ugh. But oh well. We all survived. Lyric and I loaded up and headed to Ashland to ride with Kelli and Marvin. We went to the arenas and did some dressage. 

 

Lyric was pretty darn good! She was forward and fairly relaxed today, although she had a few moments of tension. She was also twisting a tiny bit in the poll tracking right. But we had a good ride. We played with shoulder in at the trot, baby lengthenings, leg yields at the trot, and shallow counter canter serpentines. She was so good! 

 

Then we went for a hack. I mentioned to Kelli that I had told myself I wanted to jump fences every time I was out at Ashland because she gets so nutted up in her brain, so she told me to do it. So.. we did. Except it was awful. I picked up the trot and jumped a handful of jumps but she want all squirrely and threw her shoulders around and was bulging and sideways. Then she tried to run at them. I finally got a few good jumps in but argh. That was so frustrating. Kelli had some suggestions... and they were helpful, but it's like Lyric literally just has a meltdown in her brain and can't think. She just panics! And I don't think it's the fence height. But we talked through it and I mentioned that I just can't get her canter under control when she's throwing her shoulders around so Kelli suggested that maybe I only allow her to go to a fence to jump when she's straight and not bulging a shoulder. It would be tricky because in some horses, that would backfire. But for Lyric... who it really seems to be confidence... it might work. Because we think a big part of her lack of confidence is her balance. Hmmmm. We had already started hacking around while we were discussing this, so... we continued on to the lake and Lyric sat at the very edge for a minute and drank and then finally walked farther in and splashed and splashed! She was having fun. A few times I thought she might roll. So then we hacked on and did some hills. 

 

We got back to the XC field and since no one was out there... I figured... let's just test this theory out. So I picked up the trot and trotted a small log and then she was polite in her canter so we cantered on to the next small log. She jumped it nicely and kept a nice canter so we circled around to another jump. She ketp her shoulders straight so we jumped that one too. Then I decided to try something slightly bigger. And as we came around, before I even presented, she started to throw her shoulders out... so I circled her and ultimately had to bring her back down to a trot to rebalance her. We picked the canter back up and as we circled closer to the fence she got a hair squirrely, so we circled again. And then she had a nice lovely canter so we cantered on! And then we continued on to the slightly bigger roll top and she jumped that one gorgeously!! Like... even out of stride! Even with a fairly bold canter. But it was balanced and straight, so it felt so good! Yay! So we quit with that. 

 

So I do think I'll try to do that technique while I'm out there on my own. Hopefully she will realize that not only will I not ask her to jump anything while she's out of balance, but she's not allowed to jump anything unless she's in balance. And maybe that will build her confidence up quicker. But we'll see. Maybe it only went well the second go round because she had already had her squirrel rave. 

 

She got a nice rinse and got to sit and eat some hay while Kelli and I talked.  Good pony!