SATURDAY NIGHT LESSON

Tonight we had a very interesting lesson. I forgot how to ride! That happens sometimes, right? Well, it went something like this;

Warmup:

Walk on long rein 10 minutes. Stretching horse, stretching rider.

Walk halt transitions

Walk, halt, reinback transitions, keeping the halt to the reinback smooth. Big release into marching walk.

Trot on looonnng rein

Back to walk on contact, 5 loop serpentines, 4 loop serpentines

Then into laterals:

The laterals were supposed to be part of our warmup and then onto something else, but we apparantly had a brain fart tonight and I decided to forget how to use my leg and outside rein and outside leg and it was very crappy. We had a few moments of niceness, but I don't know what was wrong with me; Montana was just going along for the ride (excuse the pun). My excuse to my instructor for my poor use of my leg aids was that I hadn't worked out much this week and I was tight in my hip. BS. It was just one of those nights I guess. But she gave me some good stuff to work on. And complimented me on our color coordination for the lesson - me with a hot pink shirt and Montana in her hot pink saddle pad and hot pink Woof splint boots. At least I pulled that together. Anyway, the golden moment of the night was Lori and Teddy, he loaded in like 20 minutes tonight. He is also standing stock still for Lori to mount up now. No more dancing around the arena for 10 minutes before each ride. You couldn't get the smile off Lori's face. After her lesson tonight she showed off her bareback riding skills by vaulting onto and then off of the other side of Teddy's back. OMG, I thought I was going to pee my pants. Thanks to her we all had a good laugh. Here is a picture of Lori and Teddy and me and Montana (in the pink of course) at the Bath Hunter Pace. Smile!!!!!

Training Montana

My instructor and I have been working with my Clyde/QH cross, Montana. She is somewhere in the range of 7 to 8 years old and a PMU baby. More Clyde than QH. She has shown herself to be very smart, somewhat stubborn, and brave for the most part. I bought her for my hubby as a trail riding horse, and she is very good at that, but she also seems to have a talent for jumping. I experimented taking her to a couple of small mini-events in my area, as well as some intro dressage schooling shows last year. She did well at her stage of training, and I decided to see how far we could happily go. Happily being the operative word- I've spent too many years unhappily due to a bad trainer to waste my time and horse again. My intention is to diary our lessons and training here, and learn from our mistakes, and reflect on our aha moments. I haven't been doing so well at keeping up my handwritten diary, maybe this blog will motivate me to be more disciplined about it. Later when I have time, I'll post more about our backgrounds and our training up to this point.