Work in the school

I had a very good ride out yesterday with a friend riding Corky. Anky was jumpy, but behaved very well. She was fairly forward and relatively straight. I enjoyed it.

This morning, taking Trudi's advice, I dug the camcorder out of the cupboard and headed off with Anky to the school.
Anky was, as usual, quite distracted, took some time to settle. We worked on walk- halt-walk transitions, some good, some not so good. We had two or three quite soft halts without shuffling and then she lost focus and started to hollow into the transition. I worked on small circles, turns on the forehand which settled her and we had better transitions to the halt. If she settles in the halt, the walk transition is good with quick response to the leg. Again, better results with more genuine flexion on the right rein. On the left rein we have the same resistance stated in last post, but slightly better today, glimpses of more genuine flexion, not as set against inside leg, quicker to yield. She is sticky on the turns on the forehand, which is obvious on the video showing a lack of suppleness in the crossing over. But, all in all a good session in that I am learning more about her each time.

This afternoon, I took Anky into the picadero (bottom of the garden :-)). I wanted to try some work in-hand. I started, holding the reins near to the bit and asking her for turn around the forehand, easy, slow steps not letting her rush and once she settled we got some nice relaxed crossing on both reins.
I then asked for flexions at halt. This is something I must work on , it is the key to all the work to follow. I was happy with one or two very good flexions on each rein, quite relaxed in the mouth with light froth.
I don't know how to post the vid as yet, I'll have to open an account on youtube, but Jim took one or two pics of todays session.

This was a fairly good halt transition, but she settled a little too much on my hands.

The crossing over doesn't look too bad on this pic.