On the last day of the clinic Kathy set up a really interesting course of two 4-stride lines along the long sides, and a jump at X. We started off with some flat work, warming up, and Kathy (or Evil Kathy that morning) had us warm up with no stirrups, including posting, two-point, and lateral work. Now usually this isn't a bad thing, but after the long day of riding the day before my legs were screaming (hence Evil Kathy!). Not going to lie, when Kathy wasn't looking, I was sitting. It was really nice to do the lateral work since Koda has had some work with it, but not much. We did some work on leg yield, turns on the forehand, and in our case, shoulder-in and haunches in. I had never ridden a haunches in before, so that was kind of fun to do, plus Koda had never done shoulder-in at a trot. We have some new things to work on!
Once we got to the jumping, we did some lead work over the middle fence, essentially choose the lead you want over the fence and make sure you turn that way at C. Everyone flew through that exercise, so we moved on to the 4-stride lines. The lines were more like a short 4 or a long 3. If you came in at a trot, you could fit the 4, but if you came in at a canter, you really had to compact the stride to get the 4. Some of the riders had problems getting a smooth four, but after a bit everyone sailed through to the main exercise of the day - jumping on a diagonal. Not along the diagonal, but you're meeting your jumps on a diagonal. Similar to the exercise we had done the day before down centerline, but this was a course of them... sort of. The videos do a better job of describing it than I can.
Overall I was extremely happy with Koda and how we did during this clinic! After the clinic I asked Kathy of what I could work on during the winter with Koda. Her responses were in a nut shell: lateral work (once he gets the idea, move it up to trot/canter), transitions gait to gait or within gait, and bump the height up when jumping.
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