Zig to the Zag

Klein and I recently brought out an exercise from a book I've had since she was a baby, Schooling With Ground Poles.  Awesome book if you don't have it.

You can do a lot with the zig zag.  It can be flat or elevated with cavaletti, or both flat and elevated like we had it.  You can walk, trot, canter, and jump over it, or school changes, etc... with it from any direction or angle.

 Turning it into a tiny bounce line.

One thing I really like about this exercise, it will make SURE you are using your outside rein correctly when making tight turns around/through it.  I really like that it makes me very aware about that outside rein when I need a little reminder.

We worked over it in every variety possible.  This is also a good one, for us, to work on our changes without it being a big deal.  Klein gets a little excited after them and it helps to have something like this where you change over it and immediately are preparing to turn around and head back to the zig zag from another angle.  There's no time to get overly excited.  She did anticipate once during that school but she fixed herself after that and felt great. 

 

 Anticipating the change, and making it late behind because of it.  She fixed it herself on the landing side.

As far as changes, I'm not too concerned with her anticipating, I just want her to understand when/why she would need one.  There are no flying changes in any dressage test will be showing this year.  She does nail them when I ask about 99% of the time to the right and about 90% of the time to the left, which is her weaker side.  We will continue to clean them up and use tools like this to do it in a subtle way.

And here she is just looking like her usual beautiful self in her Back on Track gear after our first gallop of the year on New Year's Day.