The ride consisted of mostly walk again. The extent of the trot was a long side, big circle at the end, and another long side each way. Nothing exciting. He felt slightly less downhill than the day before, but he was really stretching his neck out for his balance and felt like he was using too much of his underneck. No need to promote moving in that posture.
What I was excited about, was that this was the first ride where I felt that I was able to apply inside leg on a turn and he was able to stay bent around it and move away from it at the same time. Up until now, he had figured out how to turn off my outside leg, but would fall in if I asked for a bit of inside flexion.
Since he now is starting to understand inside leg, I started asking for the first time for a bit of contact and flexion. Nothing strong, just starting to give him the idea. It was all at the walk and I don't to mess with the forwardness.
Oh - I lied. We did one other thing at the trot.
After yesterday's eagerness to do some walk/trot transitions, I wanted to see if he understood going forward in the trot off my leg.
The first long side attempt he kind of went "uh, what?". The second side - he was all "I got this". He increased the pace and kept the rhythm with mostly just my leg (I think I clucked once). That was where we ended the ride.
The next challenge will be trying to get the same inside leg reaction at the trot. That's going to take forever at the rate at which we are going!
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