Impulsion Breakthrough, spurless!

What a fabulous training session Walker, Cody and I had on Friday afternoon. Walker was in a very snotty mood, jumping through the arena gate as though he was about to run down a quarter mile track. I did not like that very much, so I asked him in and out of the gate backwards until he softened just a bit. 

We then took advantage of Walker's extra energy from being cooped up in his stall for two days and put it to work moving out at the trot. We started with a simple Dressage test and basically slopped it up. Then Cody had us do something we are calling "racetrack", getting Walker to really move out at the trot around the arena. Walker tried his usual "Oh no, I've never seen that judging stand before" moves. No one can bend away from an object like my wonderful Arab! Unless of course, it's my leg. Anyway, without spurs, I really engaged my focusing molecules and insisted that he stay focused on the game under hoof. What happened next was pure magic. For the first time ever, Walker really moved out at what Cody called a medium trot, and it felt like riding water skis on a very calm lake. She then asked me to hover over Walker's back using my knees as shock absorbers. It was an ncredible feeling, like floating on the wind. For the first time ever, I was able to concentrate on what I was doing as much and even more than what Walker was doing under saddle. 

We took that momentum into the dressage area, sitting the trot. The next amazing sensation was the feeling of being glued to the saddle as a result of his getting rounder and coming up to meet me. I did not have to push him at all at this point as he seemed to really be getting into flow of our momentum. We then did the test again and knocked it out of the park, at least for this stage in our development. Cody felt that we probably would have scored a 61, which she described as respectable. To me, it felt like heaven on earth, a number could not possibly describe that hour with my horse. Funny thing was, I could almost hear Cody in my head giving me mental nudges, a shoulder roll here, a leg suggestion there. This is the first time I have really felt "savvy" in the saddle. We had nibbled around it for the last year, but today we were squarely in the freestyle and finesse "savvy zone".

Here may be the best part: I was really exercised and sweating, having used muscles under saddle that I really had never used before, especially hovering over the saddle while trotting. Walker was not breathing hard at all. When we were done with our second test and stopped in the middle of the arena, he just gave a big sigh, as if to say, "I had that in me all along!" If he could, he might have pulled out a hoof rasp and nonchalantly started to trim his own hooves in complete self satisfaction. I love my right/left brained extrovert. He got lots of cookies, which he enjoyed immensely. What a day!