Giving to the Bit with Claire

I did not ride yesterday because I was in Houston dropping Hillary to go to Girl's camp with my sister Melanie and my nieces, and I brought back my nephews, Frank, and Cole and my niece, Jenny to stay with me for a week. Yesterday we saw the greatest movie--Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D and so I took a break from training.

Today I rode Claire for about an hour. I really tried to work on getting her to give to the bit when I take out the slack in both reins, but she is still wanting to root way day to the ground. Any advice on this??? I have decided I need to lunge her in side pulls to get her to soften more to the bit, but at the end of the day I was getting her to lower her head in the trot and hold it there for several seconds. It is going to take some work every day, but I have truly come very far with her in just three weeks of riding. I trotted her alot today, and I am going to start using the clicker not so often, teaching her not to stop with each click, but to continue on with the aids.

Here is what I worked on:

1. Lateral yielding

2. Yielding the hindquarters

3. Lot of serpetines.

4. Trotting with head down-- working towards collection.

5. Following her nose and arcing her body to follow.

I feel like I really need some more direction and some goals because I am jumping around to so many different things, so maybe I will just start workng on transitions and forget about collection for awhile. She was very gentle today and didn't get upset when Annie was racing in the back pasture against the fence and 6 army helicopters flew overhead.

I did teach horseback riding lessons to Cole, Frank and Jenny today on Poco. They all did well, and I fed Poco treats after each ride. She was very happy about that! Tomorrow I will try to post pictures of Cole, Frank, and Jenny riding-- if the 4-wheeler doesn't completely win them over!