Lessons, Dressage Clinic, and a whole lot of work

Last Thursday I had a lesson where we worked on keeping my aids ready to leap into action when needed. The best way for me to explain this is to use the example of Bold "spooking" to the inside in corners(not a leaping spook, more like a general "pop the ribcage in and stick his nose in the air"). So when Bold starts causing an issue in a corner, when I approach that corner, my spur is sitting there, just barely touching his side- enough so we both know it's there, but not enough to make him move away. but if he does try to come in, my leg doesn't go with him, so he pushes into the spur, which makes him move back out. So I'm working on doing that, but with every aid. We're still working on relaxed forearms/elbows following his mouth, so I'm imagining a cone my hands are going into. The first little bit has almost no resistance, but as he pulls more, it gets tougher to pull, until the point where my hands stop completely. It's a LOT of thinking- and I tend to over do it.
So then Friday I was in classes from 8:30 until 1:10- way too much learning! Although Thursday I did work on nutrition, which is interesting to me. When I finished class, I drove out to the barn and loaded up horses with Maura (none for me though!) and headed to the dressage clinic. We got there and got the horses settled in, and spent the night just hanging out with all the riders and the clinician. It was a really fun group of people, and this is the second time I've watched this clinician, and I can't wait to ride with him. He's very good at explaining what he wants the rider and horse to be doing, and how to get there. I was asking my trainer about him since she works with him quite often, and his next clinic in the area was full last fall! No chance I'm getting into that, and very little chance my college-student-rider budget has room for clinics right now! Maybe in a few months........
So what did he work on? Well, when I watched, he talked a lot about balance, forwardness, and using your aids. He would ask the rider "how much forward do you need?" or "How much do you need to half-halt?" or "What is a half-halt?" to get them really thinking. The answer to the first two was "until its enough (basically until the horse was finding his own balance) and I can't quite remember his exact answer to the last one, but I was discussing this with an instructor a couple weeks back, and she said "a half-halt is a rebalance. If you are on a giant Belgian that's running down the long side, what would you do? Circle. In that instance, that circle is a half-halt, because it's making your horse rebalance." And, to my mind, the clinician was saying the same idea. He seemed to be saying a lot of things my trainer has been saying, which I felt was a good sign!
Alright, I'll try to wrap this up quick- I went out to ride Bold today, after starting work at 7am and getting done at 730pm, with only a couple hours off in between lunch and dinner. He was very good- we did get into it a bit about one of the corners, but I brought him back to the walk and just went through it a few times. He started to get anxious and upset in the corner when he thought he would get in trouble, so I had to get him to calm down to be productive. I did some jockey stirrups- flip my stirrups over the saddle and trot around in them... shaky legs now! Then, at the end, I tried riding on the bit with my eyes closed. So much easier- I could feel where he was wiggling or pulling so much easier, but I probably should have taken the jumps down first.... oops! But I'm going to try the no eyes riding again soon :)

Bold tried to come in the tack room to help me find treats!

Wow, that was a long post. I'll finish the Bold story later. I get busy!