My boy Ace is doing super wonderfully these days. We have just progressed in leaps and bounds since getting access to a large arena back in November. At that point, we were happy to have forward, straightness, bending, and a little bit of ground pole work.

After three months of consistent, hard work, my handsome boy now:

• walk, trot, canters
• understands leads … most of the time
• does amazing walk to canter transitions, and gets mad if I use more than a little bit of seat and clenching my outside calf muscle to ask for it
• is very forward and responsive to leg aids
• is mostly straight
• bends well from seat and legs
• is a ground pole and cavalleti champ
• trots and canters 18″ jumps
• is learning to collect and round and hold himself in carriage for longer periods of time
• stands still for mounting
• trail rides
• does turns on the forehand, turns on the hindquarters, side passes, and a little bit of leg yielding
• is learning to stop from my seat

On a rider note, I have

• greatly improved core, seat, and leg strength
• gotten much better at riding from my seat and legs and only adding reins when necessary
• gotten better about not constantly fussing at Ace to fix everything all at once
• gained understanding and started to utilize some basic concepts I was missing, like inside leg to outside rein

One of the key issues I continue to work through is that he often drops his shoulders through turns at the canter. We’ve been doing some counter bending exercises to strengthen his body, and I am always sure to support him through the turns to keep that shoulder lifted and the bend correct.

He also has a hard time with picking up the correct lead when I ask for canter on the straight-of-way rather than in a corner. This is primarily a problem in the set up; he likes to pop his shoulders in rather than just his hips. It’s worse to the left than to the right.

I realized yesterday that part of the problem in both these areas is that Ace doesn’t accept the contact with the right rein. It’s that whole inside leg to outside rein thing I’m really starting to get. He’s great about it going to the right when he’s taking contact with the left rein. He avoids it the other direction when he should be taking contact with the right rein.

Anybody have any good exercises that will help me teach Ace to go into the contact with the right rein?