Sensitivity to the aids

Odin's coat is getting really thin right now (because of the changing weather?). He had rubs from the girth on both sides this week, the hair had rubbed off (so now I have put socks on the girth, hope it helps. Luckily the skin wasn't broken at all).

This also meant that I could suddenly see a slight spur rub appearing... oooops, bad, bad rider.
So, I got to work on aid sesitivity these last two lessons. Odin is really bad about not reacting, or giving a half answer, and I just let him do it, and then keep nagging every stride.

A lot of it is mental for me. I have to recognize that he gives me a bad or barely there answer to an aid (fx doing legyields), and then correct him. When I manage to wrap my head around it, it is great. I give a small leg aid, he doesnt do anything. I use the whip he moves forward. I then use a small leg aid again, and he moves forward. So I need of course to reach a point where I don't have to correct him, but he is reluctant. I need to be really consistent, so I hope I will manage to do so. It is a lot faster working on the lateral aids such as the leg yields than the forward ones, probalby because moving forward he has to move into the bit nicely as well. I also think he has not been trained to be very sensitive to the forward moving aids, so we have some work. But no more nagging, hopefully!

A great lightbulb moment that came from this, was in the canter. I have had trouble to keep him in the canter without him breaking, so my nagging gets bad here. We also worked on the half-halt (again, making him listen to it), so I had some trouble figuring out half-halting vs downwards transistion in the canter, espcially without the nag.
L. told me to keep him in the canter by keeping my inside seatbone forward, and use me seat to tell him that he should keep moving. And wow! that helped, when I figured it out. It was one of those great moments, where I felt I could really communicate with Odin, when we finally figured each other out! I was also very pleased that using my seatbone like that even worked, I think my longe lessons really paid off!

Another thing we worked on these last two lessons was counter canter, where I seem to have less trouble keeping him in the canter, probably because I concentrate on having him bend and having the inside aids on (including my seatbone) so he doesn't swap leads (going across the diagonal in canter? You must want a change!). It was some really nice counter-canter I got, I was pleased :)