We have a winner - and "you can go to China now"

Yes, we have a winner: Music selection for the freestyle that is. Finally yesterday the stars were aligned, weather was a 'balmy' 27F, boombox worked, so off we went strutting our stuff to music. Karen had sent me eight different selections for the trot, and after watching a video of Saumur's trot work with the different music choices I had a pretty good idea what would be a good match.

I have to hand it to Karen, I would have never picked this music on my own! And she knew it, hence her warning: "Don't rule anything out unless you absolutely hate it". We used part of my lesson yesterday to see  how well the different styles of music fit and how both Saumur and I liked riding to it. Amazingly we (Judy, JP, I, and -very important- Saumur) all agreed on the same song! Yay, now I can hardly wait for the canter music!

The lessons yesterday and today focused on getting Saumur to carry himself more. He starts out well, but then when he gets a bit tired or the work (collection) is getting hard he'd rather have me carry him. Uh, Saumur, so not a good idea, somehow the ratio is off here! As Judy kept pointing out the key is to constantly balance him with small half-halts, if I need a strong one because he's bearing down it's obviously too late. Today we cold build on our work from yesterday, which also helped with his flying changes. Initially we had some where he was late behind, but then we got good, clean ones which made Judy let me off the hook (finally!) with "OK, you can go to China now!"

Remy, the sunny boy, made me work for my money, too. Still working on his balance, and on fine-tuning my aids. Judy has been a wonderful help with my position, and when I do what she says, I can feel the difference (duh!). Mainly it is relaxing my upper thighs, and not to pinch with my knees (NO clothes pin position!).

Finally I worked well enough for Judy to tell me "good riding of my horse!". Lately she has been working  more with him, and he sure wiggled himself into her heart. Oh boy, it looks like we actually do have a  "menage a trois" here!

Off to China I fly tomorrow...