Consistency is what I lack

Today I worked on one or two of the issues I'd mentioned in earlier posts; namely going forward and tempo. The 1-2-whack worked very well. I actually only had to do that twice before Pip figured it out. Then we had to work on tempo. Pip tends to rush around, in ever shrinking circles until he finally stops. It's kind of odd, actually, but he's just getting to the middle where he thinks I might decide to get off his back.
Amanda C. helped me out, she was riding Fiona, and she hopped on Pipper, and gave me a chance to see some of what he's doing, as well as hear what I should be doing. That was incredibly helpful. Basically I'm working on using my legs and seat to move him forward into the bridle, and then asking him to also lower his head, so he's not going around hollowed as a birch-bark canoe.

So we did that, asking him to use his rear more, to lift his back, and golly gee, he slowed down, and became a lot easier to ride! I was very happy when I got back on him and he really did feel more under me.

After that, we went out on the trail, because it was just a lovely day, and we didn't want to just go home and eat! (I'm trying to lose weight so that Pip has less of me to lug around!)

Out on the trail, Pip was miles better! He didn't fling his head up, kept a nice steady trot going, as well as a lovely round caner when we went down into the Bosque. Now, I don't often canter him there, as he is usually bombing around, barely missing trees and that scares the crap out of me. But! Today we were behind Fiona, who is working on her canter departs, and Pip picked his up right away. He did get bouncy, kind of crowhopping a bit, but I sat up and back, as instructed earlier, and he settled right in fine. I will say that he doesn't stop very well, we almost ran Fiona down, but we managed.

Oh, and we measured the two of them. They are the same height, just a smidge over 15.1, Pip weighs about 950, and Fiona weighs about 1090, so she's more than 100 heavier than Pip, and she sure looks like it. When I rode her, it was amazing the difference, she has a lot of power, and you go up as much as forward, she deffo feels like a big, solid horse. Pip on the other hand, has a very scooty sort of gait, it's smooth, softer and he sure has some shuffling going on, because uphill, he's absolutely doing a flatwalk or something gaited like that! He feels like he's on his tippy toes all the time, where on Fiona, you can feel her legs landing, boom-boom-boom! It wa hard for me to get used to the difference, I have to say, I like how Pip goes more! But I know I'm biased!