get a show jumping pony to change slightly!

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mazziek

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ok so i have a 14.2 ex sj pony, 14 yo. basically any time i ask her for a contact she throws her head up and tries to fight it, eventually she accepts but she is just so used to having her head up, any time you move up a gear the head is back up! instructor said do small circles and keep asking her but im not really keen on that cos well we both get dizzy, i have thought of trying her in a hrbridge or draw reins but only for short periods of time. she doesnt not lunge in a pessoa at all! any ideas? i am doing a lot of carrot stretches to try and ecourage her!
 
Circle work is brilliant, if I were you I'd try it even if it's not your favourite thing. I've been doing a lot of it with Scooby lately to get him to engage his inside hind leg, and it's working well. You can vary it a bit - doing serpentines, ride round doing a 10-metre circle in each corner, figures of eight etc. No idea of any other techniques I'm afraid, as I have the opposite problem with Scoob - I'm constantly trying to scrape his nose up off the floor and stop him from leaning on my hands!
 
Be careful you are not changing anything when you ask for a higher 'gear.' A small prob we had with Sid was when asking for downward transitions he would hollow and lose all roundness basically due to rider error. Keep your hands the same, don't flap, keep your legs ON! Squeeze!!! Circles yes, transitions, transitions, tranisitions! Serpentines, go straight down the centre of the school, bend one way then the other, do shallow loops, leg yielding on a circle, inwards and outwards! Try to vary your schooling to keep her attention. For example don't purely do circles all lesson as you and her will get bored and start to get a bit fidgety!
 
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