Wonderful Dennis Callin Clinic & Interesting Show...

Last weekend we rode with Dennis Callin, who travels all the way from Germany to teach us every couple of months. My lessons with him were great! We worked on keeping Fin round and moving forward, and of course did some work on the flying changes. I learned that I need to counter flex Fin AND bring his shoulders to the inside before asking for a change. Seems easy enough, for the dressagey people reading this right? Well, apparently I never thought of the two together. I think I have tried changes with his shoulders to the inside, and changes with him counter-flexed, but for some silly reason, never together. So, it made a world of difference. I actually felt, for the first time, a clean change from left to right. Usually I have to wait for Susan or Ellen or whoever is around to tell me if it was clean, but this time I knew it was because I could feel it!

On Sunday, we had a show in Lodi. We showed for Caulene Glass, whom I'd never heard of before. I was rushed in my warm-up because I didn't factor in the fact that Fin would be tense and would need to be lunged before my ride. Of course, that was my fault for not budgeting enough time, so we only had about 15 mins. of riding warmup. I threw in a couple half passes at the trot and canter after our warmup, and then it was time for us to go into the ring! Whoops!

I thought our test went pretty well, especially when you consider our warmup. There were no major problems in the test, and Fin felt pretty good the whole way thru. We did have a "dirty" change, as Dennis likes to call them, from our left to right, but our right to left was clean! I was happy about that. Unfortunatly, I feel my score didn't reflect my ride, but that's okay, I was happy with how it went, and that's really the important part.

Susan's husband, Scott, was my "rent-a-husband" for the show that day since Ali wasn't able to attend because of work. Scott was nice enough to carry my coat and lunge line, and even take pictures of our ride with their FANCY new digital camera. This thing is the Mercedes Benz of all cameras, at least in my opinion, I wouldn't even know how to work it! But at any rate, he got some great shots of me and Fin during our ride, and I will post a few when I get my hands on them. :)

On Friday, Susan, Jen and I (and our horsies) are off for a week of intensive training with Ellen Eckstein, and hopefully lots of wine tasting, tack shopping, swimming and relaxing as well! It should be fun!