DQ

I had a GREAT lesson today with S! Recently, my brain has been in meltdown mode, trying to figure out which dressage-legal bit will work for us. I have tried and failed to make most of them work, switching between a Boucher, loose ring snaffle, full-cheek, eggbutt, you name it. Limerick sometimes needs a little bit more than those to not rip my arms off in downward transitions, and lately he's been resistant to working in a frame and actually using his back. However, we had a break through moment today, involving a Myler Level One Loose ring snaffle :)

Normally, my lessons with S are jumping only, but today I opted to do dressage to solve this elusive bitting issue. I'm still loving the saddle and limerick seems to go really well in it, though I gotta say that I do miss my jump saddle a little bit... Basically, the entire lesson was on a circle. S had me warm him up on a loose rein, trotting between Collyn's jumps. Then, it was my turn and we focused on getting him round at the walk, then moved up to the trot. I have to remember to carry my hands, not drop the right one, and LOOK WHERE I'M GOING! Our turns started out super shambly because I wasn't steering or using my body at all to make them smooth... Bad Katherine. However, once I started looking around the arena instead of at his neck, the whole ride got one billion times better. Funny how that works... Next, because S must have felt especially evil, she took away my stirrups, stuck limmers on a lunge line, and made me alternate between posting and sitting trot for 15ish minutes. Let's just say it was probably the hardest lesson I've had in a while. My abs and back are so sore, not to mention my thighs! Limerick has the bounciest trot ever and it's no easy feat to sit.

Once I figured out how to sit back on my seat bones and distribute my weight evenly, it all went quite smoothly and limerick was a doll! We ended with some of the best canter work we've ever had, in which Lim was perfectly round and I felt like we were just floating along, making nearly perfect circles around S :) The Myler is seriously the best thing to ever happen to us, and I already have one in the mail, coming to us from Dover! I'm planning on having a jump school tomorrow, so I'll try to update with details from that.