Bel Joeor

In lieu of an actual thinky update, a few bullet points:

- Tristan is awesome. No surprise there.

- My left leg is substantially weaker than my right, and now that we're working more and more and more from the seat and the legs it's starting to light up holes in my aids with big neon signs. To wit, spiraling out tracking left is hard, as is spiraling in tracking right. To say the least. Slowly getting better, though, as my aching hips can attest.

- I want a dressage saddle so badly I can taste it. Unfortunately, it's rather low on the financial priority list.

- In talking with L., we're going to set up a weekday soon to take Tristan over a bunch of XC jumps in hand, especially the ditch and the banks, before we introduce them under saddle. He's jumped most everything in a haphazard way, but I want to do it *right.*

- I'm hauling people to King Oak this weekend. We'll see how my trailering anxieties hold up. Fingers crossed no panic attacks. :-/ Only thing for it is to keep doing it, though. And once I'm in the truck and driving I'm usually fine.

- I'm struggling right now with a bit of a dichotomy: when I really get my leg in the stirrup at the canter, I lose my seat. Vice versa. I know the answer here is that I'm not truly deep in my leg, I'm just propping off the stirrup and that's what's lightening my seat, but damn, it's proving to be a long uphill slog to get the same feel in the canter as in the sitting trot or the walk, that plugged-in, legs-as-weights sensation. Tiny, subtle shifts in balance and weight are still missing.

- I'll miss the Flatlands show in July for family time, but I'm eying the XC Safety Clinic at Scarlet Hill in June, and the Flatlands show in August. In the fall, who knows, maybe an off-property dressage schooling show, if we can find one? I'd like a crack at a Training test, especially after we've had all summer to work on our canter.

- Speaking of the canter, the transitions. I'm feeling in a lot of my riding right now like I know where to find the answers, I just have to work harder to get them. I know the feeling I'm looking for in that transition, and I have pieces of what it takes to get Tristan there, but so far a good, uphill, soft, relaxed canter transition is eluding us except for a split second at a time.

- Solutions, as always: ride better.