Schooling Around

So even though it was bucketing down with rain again yesterday (Sunday), myself and Claire decided to go schooling anyway. When I got to the yard with Millie, it was raining heavy enough. Threw her in the stable and got the tack out of the jeep. We waited to see if the rain would lighten a bit but it didn't. Dad went up to collect Claire and Jess anyway and by the time they were back, I was already out on Millie warming up and doing some dressage like Tara showed me. The rain shower lightened and then cleared when Claire came into the arena so we were good to go. Millie was very good. She did everything she was asked but trot is really hard for her. She won't put down her head in trot, don't know if its habit, confusion or just being bold but in walk and canter she is fine, so I don't think its boldness. I don't know. But the other problem with her is, when I put on my inside leg for her to move away from it in trot, she speeds up too. So its very hard for me to do the aid with my hands when I am trying to slow her down too. Its such a bad habit she has and I don't know how I am going to break it. She only speeds up in trot and canter and not in walk. She moves off my leg fine in walk, and will leg yield in walk and trot, so its not like she doesn't know what she is doing. Anyway, it will all take time and effort and some days it wont be as easy as others but you got to take the good with the bad and move on with it. In my experience, its always one step forwards and three backwards with horses, but when you finally get there, the feeling is unreal. But I am super excited about our new goals and I can't wait to have something new to work on. Anyway, so we done our warm up, failing a bit in trot, especially on our bad rein, the left one.
So there was a grid already set up in the arena with three bounce fences, and then two strides to another fence. Dad adjusted the distances a little for horses and we gave it a go. It was such a good exercise for them. They really had to concentrate on what they were doing because it was all new and it was also a variety for them too, instead of constant jumping courses all the time. Got two really good books, 101 jumping exercises and 101 schooling exercises so going to give them a good read. Anyway we jumped our grid a good few times and got some videos. Then we done a horse swap.
I rode Jess (shockingly bad) and Claire on Millie. To my complete and utter shock, Claire had her in an outline in two minutes (vid at end). She was so so good for her I couldn't believe it, although she used a different method of getting her head down that T thought me in lesson, not sure if this will confuse her or not so will stick to trying method learned, but it was unbelievable. It was so weird seeing her behave so well for someone else. But I was mega proud of her. We had a jump around on them and then I tried to replicate what Claire was doing on Millie myself. Didn't get on too great but its a start and everyone has got to start somewhere. I think its myself as a rider has to learn to ride and feel her in an outline. Where I learned to ride, we weren't thought about that, it was all about jumping and you just sat on a school horse and jumped what was in front of you. I think its myself and my riding that I need to improve. Maybe Millie was capable of this the whole time but I just haven't been capable to tell her the right thing to do in the right way. Hopefully my dressage lessons will be able to fix this problem, because I need to badly. Going to organize another one this week and I think Claire is going to come too and get one on Jess aswell.
Ok this is after getting seriously long winded for a little update post. So thanks for reading if you got this far and if you have watched the video's, another huge thank you :) If you have any feedback/advice/critisizm about my riding in these video's please don't be afraid to tell me as they are things I can work on and improve to help both of us. Thanks again :)

Going in trot

Another jump added to grid

Bigger jump at the end

Gettimg it right

Horse Swap with Millie in the perfect outline

Me trying to replicate Millie in an outline, not doing too well