FEI Challenge comes back to haunt me...

I have discovered a little-understood downside to having one's dressage teacher participate in a clinic taught by a hot-shot international FEI judge from Sweden. That is that said teacher comes to class the next day ON FIRE with new ideas.

J. and I came into the arena yesterday and ran headlong into A's steely new determination to get J. round and on the bit. Five thousand half-halts later, I think we actually semi-achieved this goal for a good four strides. And it was a lovely 10 seconds. But will we ever be able to stretch that 10 seconds out to last for an entire test?

(Photo above is NOT my horse. My horse only dreams of looking so cool.)

Nothing really wrong with all this, except for the screaming in my shoulder muscles and the equally painful reminder that I know nothing. It seems that my horse and I achieve the most fundamental goals of the dressage discipline approximately .001 percent of the time.

Ah well, pole pole (slowly slowly), as we say in Kenya