Robert Dover Clinic Day #1

Today was the first day of the training sessions with Canadian team advisor Robert Dover, we hauled out to Still Point Farm for our session (day 1 to be a normal day's training with day 2 being a test practice day) which is about a half hour drive away so not too far a ride for the horses.  We had a really productive session, I took a few minutes to warm Nico up and settle him outside as he was a bit looky before we went in for our lesson, at the beginning Nico was a bit tense moving from the outdoor into the indoor and so we just cantered him forward around the ring with a slight inside flexion until he started to breathe and relax again which actually didn't take too long to achieve so that was good, we then worked on getting more suppleness working lots of shoulder in everywhere in the arena and really pushing him from the inside leg to the outside rein while keeping the inside flexion steady, we then worked through a bit of trot work, the half passes felt quite good:)  We spent a couple minutes working on the pickup of the collected walk and the collected walk on the line in between the walk pirouettes which was good as it was feeling a bit shaky, we then went into canter and after the walk break Nico was feeling a bit tight as we picked up canter so we worked the canter for a few minutes on a five loop serpentine staying on one lead (so going in and out of counter canter) and always keeping him in a distinct shoulder in feel even on the counter canter loops I found this to be a very useful schooling tool and quite liked the impact it had on the canter, we then did a couple of half passes (working on keeping him into the outside rein in the half passes: he used the visual of thinking about lowering the outside ear in the jump of the half pass which sounds a bit odd but when you're riding it actually makes a lot of sense and was quite a helpful mental image for me) then we worked through the tempis which all worked quite well so we just worked on tidying them up by making them more centered in the ring (three strides out of the corner to begin the fours, five strides out of the corners to begin the threes and seven strides out of the corner to begin the twos) then we worked on the pirouettes which actually were quite good but there was a bit of bracing in them so we made him wait in the pirouette canter without turning until he relaxed and then when he started to relax in it brought him in to the pirouette I found this quite useful.  So all in all it was a productive session and I think we got a lot of useful pointers and some good exercises to chip away at at home.  Tomorrow we will school through the I1 with Robert and hope that we can get a few more tips for in the show ring:)