Lessons with Carl
Well, I’m delighted to say that Carl thought Potter looked so much better for being ‘cut’. This is such a relief, as I would have been gutted if my decision to cut him had been a waste!
In canter, we focused on getting him more into the left rein and softer on the right. To achieve this, we are leg yielding, not too severely, from inner track away from the right leg to the left and trying to feel more left rein without bending the neck too much to the right. On the right rein, we worked on pushing him away from the track and leg yielding off his right shoulder, then compressing canter on a circle. In trot, the aim was to be slower and not run so fast.
On Saturday, Olivia Whitelaw came to ride him with a view to campaigning the FEI pony classes. They made a lovely picture together, so it should be exciting for all of us…
I was double-delighted, as Carl went on to say how much Lenny had progressed – it’s so nice to hear your work can be seen in improvement.
We worked on pirouettes, working on keeping Lenny more in front of the leg in the working pirouettes and more into the contact. This should keep him a little rounder, so he doesn’t slightly nod the head and disconnect. We then worked on a ten metre circle, pushing him off his outside leg and just bringing both hands to the inside to turn it smaller. I can’t let him put too much bend into the neck as then the connection to the bit gets lost. Instead, Lenny has to be more relaxed onto the outside contact before I can put in the bend.
When doing shoulder-in, the focus was on keeping elevation by half-halting Lenny more on the outside rein and not letting him run flat. We worked on bringing him back in the trot for some elevated steps and used the whip on the top of his bum to help with this.
