Grid plus one with John

This week's grid was the same as last weeks, with a fourth fence, a vertical, at the end.  John made the vertical 3'11", which I think was a few inches shorter than the oxer last week.  It still popped me out of the tack pretty much every time, though.

We started with an excellent exercise over a ground pole.  John made me half halt as we approached it, and even when we hit the wrong spot, Charlie would add a stride, and he would round up over the top of the pole.  John said that a lot of times practicing ground poles, you just puke over them, which defeats the purpose of the exercise.  I have definitely been doing that, so this was a great exercise that was another "click" like last week's.

John also said he could tell that I had really worked on the half halt after last week - he said he could see a difference, and I could definitely feel one making the turn to come down the line.  Charlie didn't have to canter and we were much more "round" and could go in bouncy which saved everything.

The other thing the grid showed was how badly we are drifting to the left.  Even though we start straight in the center, we'd end up close to the left standard by the fourth fence.  John said to look right - at first he had it really exaggerated - he stood off to the side and told me to look at him, then he stood closer, then he had me look at the right standard, and then finally just to the right of the centerline of the pole.  Amazingly enough, that was all it took to get us through the grid straight.  What it did though - adding another thing onto the plate - was make it hard for me to remember to snap my head up and look out the exit, so I kept missing my leads.

Also, I had to really kick Charlie to get over the oxer (not that big, maybe 3'6"?) and then over the vertical (which felt huge, but was less big than the oxer last week), and that was good too, to have to kick in the middle.

It was really great to feel the progress from last week and that what I was doing made a difference, and the ground pole exercise was really timely since I've been working with them.  I told John I'm having trouble with lead changes, and he asked flying?  I said no, Charlie could only do them one way and he said, probably left to right but not right to left.  So next lesson (Thanksgiving week) I'm going to try those.

It was another great lesson.  John is really good at building things up and building confidence but helping get the lesson through my thick skull.  It was also a gorgeous, cold day.