Way back before Christmas when the ponies were away I managed to squeeze in another lesson.  Actually two more – I split my lesson in two and did half on each pony.

This time it was daylight so Galahad was concentrating a bit more and worked really well.  We still have issues with him escaping through his right shoulder but I think it is improving.  My riding and ability to deal with any wobbliness is certainly getting better!  My instructor made the interesting point that Galahad’s trot work is so much freer and looks a lot nicer after he has done some cantering.  Even if it is just halfway round the ring it really makes a difference.   I would have liked to take advantage of this and have a bit of a canter before my walk-trot dressage test but the waterlogged warm up ring made it impossible.  Still, it is good to know for the future.

We also had a jump over what was quite a twisty course my instructor had built.  She was impressed with how Galahad had improved since the summer.  He is now much better able to hold the canter round corners between jumps and the whole course was much more fluid than before.  The jumps were slightly bigger too – this was more of a 2’3″ – 2’6″ course and in the summer we were jumping 2′ – 2’3″.  We even had a pretty decent spread as the last fence – which we probably jumped better than anything else!

in fact, our only trouble was caused by me.  I know that if I look down he is more likely to run out but it can be quite hard for me to act on that.  Something to work on.

The shorter lesson actually worked out pretty well as Galahad was starting to get tired.  A clip will definitely be in order once I can start working him a bit more consistently.