Adult Camp Day Two

Day two brought us riding bright and early. I actually love when I have the first ride. I get the whole arena to myself and it is so quiet and peaceful. Roscoe is not as distracted and we seem to work really well.
Lauren started us with some leg yields and then we moved on to going between shoulder fore and shoulder in. Moving Roscoe's shoulders has always been difficult for me. And in the beginning he was moving his hind end. By the time Peggy started the video, he was actually moving his shoulders. All that chrome looks pretty cool in the lateral work.

From there we started the tough stuff of making him shoulder in on the circle. We have tried this before with no results. This time I could feel him attempt the exercise. The hope was to get him to bring his neck down and his back up. Neck falling down was a term we heard a bunch. We did start to figure it out on a circle. He was more active and true when he put it together. We had a harder time maintaining it through changes of bend. I am amazed at the change of quality he has achieved in just the last year.

We moved on to walk to canter transitions. She had us activate his walk and do some walk trot quick transitions. I have only played with these a couple times before. He gave me one awesome one. This time he was a bit tired, so they were not as clean. Once we were in canter, we had to work again at getting his neck to fall down. Plus add in some half halts to get him to sit. I ran out of oopmf to hold us both together. But the times we did manage to keep the canter going, it felt really good.

Unfortunately the phone ran out of video room before we got to the right lead. I had to tickle him with the whip to convince him he could keep going forward when I half halted. This was similar to the lesson with Lisa last year. Roscoe is better since then. We just might be able to handle 1st level.

Lauren kind of redeemed herself with this lesson. I came away feeling like I accomplished something and with hope for the future. Mom had a good lesson too. Lauren even made her canter. We are hoping to do two semi private lessons a month, which will cost the same as if we each did one private a month.

Lauren also provided all the campers with a goodie bag. Everyone except DaVinci likes the cherry flavored cookies.

Make sure to get your foal pool guess in!