Hawley Bennett with Stephanie Nicora on High In The Air at Dragonfire.
Hawley Bennett dropped in at Dragonfire this past weekend for another one of her fabulous clinics. Everyone was excited to show off how much they’ve improved since she last stopped by. Saturday’s coursework was primarily focused on both testing our accuracy as well as improving it. Skinny fences featured heavily in the courses for all levels.
The warm-up exercise started with a two-stride stride to two-stride line. After a trip through it on both leads, a turn to a skinny chevron in four was added. This was also done off of both leads. From there, the courses and exercises got more complex. The far side of the ring had a set of four hay stacks with ridiculous paper plate flags, each set two strides apart. The hay stacks were an interesting challenge. Some horses didn’t think twice and were steady down the line; others looked pretty hard the first time through.
Arena Set Up For Saturday
My favorite elements of the course were certainly the one stride-bounce-one stride and the angled two-stride. The first because it required me to really sit up and not get ahead with my torso, and the second because it was an excellent confirmation of an accurate ride. You can check out some of the ways the course was used in the video recap below, as well as photos from the first day at Dragonfire Farm’s Facebook page!
