Lesson #2

We had a phenomenal lesson on Sunday. I am having so much fun with this mare! I'm glad I left off at such a positive place in Bear's journey, or I'd be feeling really guilty for having so much fun cheating on him!

We got some video since I'm trying to get current video to send to potential buyers. Sadly we had the same issues with light, but I'll share anyway! You also get all the fun commentary from my trainer on every weird thing that I'm doing wrong! Yes, its is true, I can't sit square in the middle of the saddle, especially in canter left. I can't keep my sneaky right hand up, pretty much ever. My inside leg is rarely far enough forward, my outside is rarely far enough back, and let's face it, following asking with your inside seat-bone and doing anything else simultaneously is just an absurd expectation!

 Enjoy feeling better about your own riding by comparison! ;p

Trot work with canter, then working on getting that stretchy trot again. She's not a easy to get stretched going to the right but still had some success. Then work trot-walk transitions.


Canter departs until I finally get them right.


Canter work to the left, including finally nailing the idea of "collect, collect, collect THEN trot" downward transition. (Had judges comment on needing that on Bear too.)

We also threw in leg yields at sitting trot. I think I laughed when she told me! Lola is actually great at lateral movement, she naturally is better than Bear. BUT we hadn't done them at the trot before, and I hadn't SAT the trot on her before! So this was our first go at both!

After the video I stopped and we chatted about it since I really didn't feel like I was tapping into what Lola could actually do. She re-phrased it a bit. Instead of thinking push her over with my leg, it was use the sitting trot to push her over with my seat. Basically use the minimal so that if I needed to correct her haunches not stepping enough I could use my leg to escalate the directions. It worked so much better!

She also had me keep sitting the trot all the way around the short side and only posting when I pushed her back into a bigger trot across the diagonal. This got us a bit more pizazz  trot steps. I still felt terribly floppy sitting the trot, so what does that call for? MORE sitting trot! We worked on transitions within the trot: collecting to something more "sit-able" then pushing it out, then collecting back, etc.

It got better, and Stacie even snapped a cell phone photo of it before we finished the lesson with one last attempt at stretchy trot. We finally nailed that! I was so pleased. She really loves free walk, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that stretchy trot is growing on her so quick!

Man do I appreciate my horse for letting me make mistakes and learn from them.