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November 24, 2012: Dressage lesson with Tracy. Concentrated on keeping my knees loose, relaxing my body, keeping steady pressure on Gamble's mouth until he "figured it out" and relaxed into the "uphill" head carriage.
November 24, 2012: The Ontario Horse Trials Association Banquet was tonight and, as expected, we won 2nd Overall in the Training Senior division, alongside Carolyn Pass-Cormier (1st Overall) who consistently posted phenomenal dressage scores followed by consistently flawless jumping and XC, and Kaytlin Roberts on Drop Dead Gorgeous who held onto 3rd Overall after a great start but a challenging end to the season. Congratulations go out to both girls for a great season!
 Me, Carolyn Pass-Cormier (1st Overall) and Kaytlin Roberts (3rd Overall). Photo by Andrew Bailini, who
spent countless hours on XC courses recording our events in photos. Thanks Andrew!
But the surprise of the evening (for me) was that Gamble was the Top Thoroughbred Training Division -- so he was the high point Thoroughbred between Training Jr, Training Sr and Training Open. There were _lots_ of Thoroughbreds out there, so I was pretty pleased!
November 25, 2012: Lesson with Holly. Did flat-work with extending the trot (almost to a canter), worked on picking up different canter leads from the walk along the long side of the arena, and then keyhole lead changes (a tight keyhole change of direction at the canter followed by a lead change as you exit the loop). Then we worked on various tight angle jump combinations, including one small "X" jump where you were coming at it practically from the side. An excellent lesson, as usual.
Afterwards, we worked out a schedule for building up Gamble's muscle and experience leading into our Prelim level events in 2013:
Monday: Trot Cardio - 30 to 40 minutes of almost-canter trot work, to build his hind end.
Tuesday: A day off!
Wednesday: Dressage lesson.
Thursday: Practice dressage lesson
Friday: Open -- Go on a hack, practice dressage, practice flat-work concepts from jumping lesson.
Saturday: Mini (half-hour) jumping lesson.
Sunday: Full jumping lesson (or show)
November 26, 2012: Did 25 minutes of almost-canter trot work along the pipeline. Didn't want to overdo it on his first "trot cardio" day.
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