Did it make a difference?

When I turned up at the field today I was intrigued to see whether or not my play session yesterday had made any impact on Bella.  Judging by the fact that she was at the field gate before I had even got the main gate open so I would say YES,  Good sign!

I started our session with a little online to get us both ready for our ridden session. Bella was doing great even if she was in a bit of a punkie mood (cheeky punk rather than the normal stroppy punk!).  

I started the freestyle session with a bit of circling round a barrel and touch it trying to use my body then backing up with my carrot stick.  The purpose of this was to try to get us in-tune a bit more.  Then I did a few halt, walk, trot transition and moved on to the 'Bowtie' pattern. 

My plan today was to work on the 'Bowtie' pattern with the aim to start cantering.  I started in walk just to get her established on the pattern, then started to ask for trot across the diaginal parts.  We have played with this pattern before so she soon remembered and was soon picking up the trot just from a slight shift in energy from me. 

Thing where going well so I up my energy and she shot forward into a few fast steps of trot, which was a nice offer, but next time I asked she got really stroppy, dropped her head a threatened to buck .... mmm, how interesting! I guess I over did it a bit so I backed off and she went back to happily offering a gentle trot so I left it there.

We stopped and had a graze for a bit then I asked her to do a few transitions. At first she was really grumpy so a went to point to point till I got a few nice transitions and quit there for the day.

When I untacked I noticed that there where some rubbing marks in the hair on her shoulders where the saddle was sitting. Her muscles are building up where she is using her back more now so her saddle is not fitting as well.  Need to see if I can pad or shim it differently and get it off her shoulder more, maybe this is causing some of her crankiness in going forward ....

Not the best riding session ever, but one to give me a few things to think about!