Paradox Ride

So Friday afternoon I went out, caught Paradox, and went up to the jump arena for some groundwork as they were power-washing the smaller arena and none of the instructors were around yet.  Discovered that her groundwork is not so bad as I thought it was; mostly she just needs to learn to move off of lighter signals.  Right now I have to give really strong cues before she responds and I don't like that.  But it was better than I expected, and I was happy to see that her feet/legs were doing better than they had been on Wednesday.  So after a while of groundwork I brought her back down to the barn, put her in a stall, and let her chill out while I went to see Rhapsody. 

Rhapsody's session went quite well despite the fact that she jumped away like I'd slapped her the first time I went to scratch her shoulder.  But she came back fairly quickly and let me start scratching her neck and chest again by the time I had to leave.  We'll get there...I haven't moved the lead rope or halter off my shoulder yet as they're a bit bigger and more overwhelming than just the little rope, but I hope next week I'll be able to start moving them around while I'm rewarding her without freaking her out.

Then I went back down and waited for one of the other instructors to show up.  After a while she did, and I tacked up Paradox (Western, as my riding tights were still in the wash!) and headed down to the smaller arena.  I had her in the neck stretcher to see how she'd do and was pleasantly surprised.  Our goal with her is to begin to teach her to go long and low, and she was stretching down nicely at walk and trot intermittently, and doing decent transitions between the two gaits without flinging her head around or bucking (usually).  I did have a few moments of crow-hop-bucky-ness when she decided she wanted to be on the grass in the center of the arena and I told her no.  But nothing terrible.

I wanted to canter but by then there were some little kids coming in and I didn't feel comfortable cantering my crow-hopping pony on the inside track (she loves to dive in and lean in), or trusting them to stay out of my way.  So I tried a canter in the round pen, but no luck.  In the end I got off and lunged her at canter and she went with no bucking, but a dreadful leaning in.  Probably why she won't canter in there with me on her--she'd likely fall right over.  I see some walk/trot circle and bending practice in our future while we work on canter on the rail! 

The other thing we need to work on pronto is moving off my leg.  I basically can't steer her without using the reins majorly; she is absolutely clueless about responding to leg pressure.  We ended with a walk on the buckle in the round pen while I worked on getting her to respond a bit to weight/seat/leg cues.  We wandered around kind of like we were drunk, but she did eventually respond to my request to stop although I think part of it was because she wanted to eat! 

Well we will see how this goes.  I'm learning a great amount, if nothing else.  :)