Clinic Preps

This weekend is the Jon Holling clinic up in Sherborn, MA and while I'm excited about it, I am also nervous nervous nervous. We're going to be in the "Soft Novice" group as opposed to the other novice group, which is "Novice/Training" and DEFINATELY not us!!
This past week was a bit of a waste, and he had a LOT more time off than I wanted him to, but I'm not too worried. Last Monday (the 29th) I walked into the barn to find that his front left was all scraped up. It was hot and fat and he was head bobbing lame on it... GREAT! We were scheduled to truck down to Nancy's the next day, but that was not looking likely, so I called to leave her a message that my horse is an idiot and we might not be sound tomorrow. I cleaned the scrapes (Luckily that's all they were) and deduced that he had probably stuck his foot through the fence. After the scrapes were cleaned, I put ice on the leg for about 20 minutes and then poulticed it for the night, hoping maybe it would be magically better in the morning.
Needless to say, it WASN'T magically better in the morning... it was still hot and still fat. He WAS, however, sound on it, which made me extremely happy. We missed the lesson, and I re-iced/re-poulticed and took him for a hand-walk. I went back that evening to take the poultice off, put more ice on and re-bandage. Luckily, it was looking a lot better. By wednesday the swelling had gone down quite a bit and he was still sound, so I elected to do a little flat work. Thursday, I showed up ready to really put him to work and discovered that he had ripped that left front shoe off. Our farrier, being the WONDERFUL person that he is, came out within an HOUR of me calling him in a panic and fixed the problem, but I had run out of light for riding. Friday we did more flat work, but it was kind of an awful ride... neither of us was in sync. He was tense and pissy and I was impatient. After forty minutes of arguing and not getting much accomplished, I finally just had him do some stretchy work, which he loves, and called it a day.
Speaking of stretchy, I am really excited about how great he's doing with that. He really takes the contact down and stays engaged behind now, so I really feel like we're improving from the stretch work now.
Saturday we had a lesson with Jen, which wound up being somewhere around an hour and a half long. We spent about an hour on flat work, drilling transitions and working on lateral movement a bit. I really feel like he's starting to GET the transitions up and down, but I also feel like I need to help him out a little more. His trot work is really improving... he is more consistantly forward and has become easier to ride at in terms of asking for more trot. His canter is, as always, a work in progress... he has a pretty good canter naturally, but I never feel like it's as good as it could be. We're getting there... he's more forward than he used to be, at least. After working on the flat, we did a little jumping. Jen set up a 9' bounce and we continued working our transitions before/after it to get him more uphill. Eventually, she shortened the distance a little, and I really felt the quality of his gaits improve through the exercise... he was responsive, up in front and jumping in great form by the end. Now we just need to get him a little more careful over smaller jumps! He jumps very correctly most of the time, and uses himself well, but he sometimes gets lazy... especially when the jumps are small and/or plain.
I'll post more later (or after the clinic, if I don't find time before then!).