A lot of my last few rides have been working on Archie responding to my seat.  Thanks to 100 Whatever, You Suck As A Rider, I've learned that I've been reversing the pressure of my seat bones, oh... my entire riding life.  You know, twenty-plus years.  Fuck, I'm old.

The brilliant monster that he is, Archie had pretty much become numb to this means of communication.  Mom's ass says go left, but she's bent me right and has that left leg closing off my left shoulder.. I'll go right and see what the fuck happens next.


So it's been a lot of walking, over-dramatizing the pressure of my seat bone, making the answer to my question as easy as possible, praising the fuck out of him when he gets it, and immediately bringing my seat back to neutral.  I have a harder time with this madness at trot, because there is such little time with my bum in the saddle.  And since we do walk/canter transitions (because I have almost successfully broken the habit of chasing him into the canter), it's been pretty easy for me to do the same walk exercise while setting him up for canter.  I derped last night, got frustrated when I couldn't get him to pick up the right lead, which led to him getting pissy and confused.  So I stopped, walked for a moment, reassessed where I was sitting, where my upper body was, and bam.  No problem.

We did do a little bit of jumping on Saturday.  Every single standard had been crammed into the ring and it was.. um.  Not up to my standards.  So after lowering fences, adding ground poles, securing barrels, and switching out PVC for wood, he and I just worked on trotting and cantering some baby fences.   Him being amazing and me working on my sumo squat.

...

We've also worked on a couple of the very first few exercises in 100 Ways, Bitch, Please, I'm Fabulous that involve teaching him to lower his head on command and to come.  Meh.  Ground tie?  Stand?  Graze peacefully and not run off?  We're amazing at that.  Coming when I don't have a treat?  Meh.