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Remember how stuck I get on the half pass vs. leg yield issue? I think I have my brain wrapped around it now.

Watch this video (sorry, can’t embed it here—you’ll have to see it via YouTube).

Jump, that is.

I cantered this week.

All right—so the leg yield vs. half pass. Again.

This is the sort of thing I could probably have an answer to if I’d just use Google. Or if I would buy a book or two about dressage. But I’m feeling anti-search engine at the moment, so consider this a note-to-self until I can go find out the official reasons.

Or, if you know, feel free to enlighten me. Seriously. Why is the leg yield before the half pass on the training scale?

Why is it that the one time I don’t copy my post before I hit submit (in case my control panel arbitrarily decides I’ve been idle too long and decides to make me log in again instead of posting the post), my control panel arbitrarily decides… look, you’re not going to make me type out that whole parenthetical statement again, are you?

It was a lovely post, but now it’s gone.

The gist of it:

Kelly has an interesting post on fear and riding (thanks to LearningHorses for the link). As we all know, the thought of jumping makes me want to pull the covers over my head and cry myself to sleep. Between Kelly’s post and my own thoughts on the fear issue, I’ve reached some tentative conclusions:

Back in the day, I took Super Saint to a dressage clinic. Within five minutes, the clinician said, “Oh, so you’re a hunter rider.”

Oh, so yes I am. And?

The clincian’s point was that, since I jumped at home all the time, I could do the cavalletti exercise first because I’d be the most comfortable with it. What, you thought this would be about the differences between a hunter seat and a dressage seat?

Hi, my name is Halt Near X and I think fire-breathing dragons live under jumps. What I think of gymnastic exercises isn’t really printable–it’s only in the last week or two that I’ve been able to watch other riders go through them without cringing.

This week I had another of those hit-by-a-bus days. Hard to tell what brings them on–full moons, weird weather fronts, my imagination. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t being hit by an actual bus, because I’d remember that.

I decided to go riding anyway, on the assumption that moving around would be good for me. My trainer, who is awesome, turned the lesson into a physical therapy-like session. My job–my only job–was to relax and let the horse move my hips.