I managed to catch a bonus lesson with my trainer on Wednesday because that’s how the timing worked out this week. Even better, the weather was great and Eli seemed to be in a very good mood.

We worked on a breaking up a course into pieces, sometimes trotting in between lines, and other times starting with the long approach to the planks Swedish oxer. If that’s our first fence, we can do any first fence.

There are more jumps than this in the arena; I just drew in the relevant ones.

Eli produced. Every time. I rode the Swedish much better than I had on Saturday — better distances, smart decisions, early decisions. Trying to commit to something from merely two strides out is kind of dumb, and I kind of do it a lot. But this time, as my trainer instructed, I stayed on the same step out of the corner and did not accelerate.

I also had to work on balancing after a fence to either get a good lead change or downward transition. That all worked out pretty well, too. Eli offered some changes BEFORE the corners in the last course we did. He can still be tricky, but he is getting simpler, at least at home!

Here is an unrelated video of Eli enjoying some round pen time.

round pen post roll from patentlybay on Vimeo.

We have a clinic coming up the first weekend of November — a private, in-barn clinic with a trainer out of Louisiana. I hope the weather stays dry enough, but you never know with Texas “winter.”