Sunday Spin

We had another glorious day here yesterday (think 23 C), however I remained craven and shunned the outdoor in favour of "my" arena where Kika and I get on best.
I put down some trotting poles and The Mammy came to make one of them a cross pole for me when I was happy that Kika and I were on the same page.
Our canter work is still very iffy on our previously "good" rein, we can't seem to get on the same page for striking off - am sure this is predominantly my fault as I'm probably forgetting a step and/or just plain doing something wrong. I was thinking about it last night and realised we ahve also developed an issue with staying on/near the track when riding on this now troubling rein. I have come to the conclusion that i must be forgetting my legs!
As Kika and I are working better together with what I hope is more of a mutual understanding and more of a relationship rather than a dictatorship from me. She is obviously going to start relying more on my aids which must come up to par with the work we are now trying to do.
I had this epiphany as we worked on our trotting poles, she was so good - really waiting for me, maintaining our outline and waiting for the poles to come to us ratehr than rushing at them and them tripping herself up.
Happy days!
This thankfully did translate to when we tackled the cross pole, nothing major and no course, just a single cross pole to see what we'd make of it. Previously Kika would see a fence and rush at it in her excitement - the gem in the crown of the work we have done since last autumn/winter is that she now does not and again waited for me and my aids. Which again will need to be brought up to par as I found myself still anticipating the rush and initially didn't have a good enough trot going into the fence, that and my eye for the stride was out of practice. We sorted ourselves out however and got a few good pops off each rein.
Our good work came crumbling as I wanted to attempt the fence in canter, think i could get the canter i wanted?
I decided to ask for canter on a circle to get her going well before getting anywhere near the jump, but any improvements we had made the last few days with our strike-off on our "previously" good rein went right out the window again. So i didn't tackle the jump from canter at all and instead went back to work on striking off correctly from the canter.

Both Kika and i need to make the mental ajustment that just because we have fences we cannot forget our flatwork!

Unfortunately there are no pics or mini-videos, The Mammy was distracted in watching and didn't think of photo-taking! She did report afterwards that our trot work is about 75% whereas our canter is down at around 20% - I know this though and we are working on it.

Although we ended on a bit of a sour note in my book with my inability to get the canter i wanted to jump from it - we didn't end on a bad note I did go back to work on our canter and get it as i wanted before finishing up.
Highlight of my day was that The Mammy sat up to cool Kika down as I tidied away the poles and fence.
I was a happy camper!