Although I am super happy with where Lucy is right now I would love her to lope a little slower. Her head and neck are relaxed and level, but we are lacking consistency in our speed controle. It will come with time, and fitness. I do not want the super fake 7 beet lope that is popular now in the AQHA/APHA/ApHC show ring. However I to want to be able to rate her speed better and be able to ask for transitions within the gait. Right now we have one speed, and somewhat jerky portions of slower lope. I can ask her to move out and then suck back at the jog so its coming.
I do have to say that in our exercises to rock her back on her haunches, is to counter bend them in a circle and spiral in to a very small circle. It gets them opening up the inside shoulder, rocking back on the haunch and moving away from the outside leg. When we started the exercise last month Lucy would often break or end up loping a not so small, small circle. Last night we were able to do a less than 10m circle and she was so light and slow but with such good rhythm, it make me so excited with how fit she is getting and how much possibility there is this summer.
I was so busy fighting to stay on Lucas' good side we never got to pushing our boundary's like this.
1 comment:
You're still seeing that horrible lope at the shows too? I thought we were "loping with forward motion" these days. HA! What a joke that is.
I'm going to have to try your exercise with Lilly. We finally have some control, so I'm looking for ways to slow her down too. I've been doing exercises to get her anticipating the whoa, which worked wonders with her jog, but don't seem to be resonating as much with her lope.
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