must learn control
I had a good lesson last Friday. I was on Theo again. Jen on Hot Shot, and Lauren on Kokomo.
Lots of trotting. We did a bunch of voltes. I'm pretty good at doing a volte, but when I am in between the other two horses, and they basically make a hard turn, go out however far, and then make a sharp u-turn back to the wall, I can't really make a nice, round volte. So we worked on round voltes. We did many changes of direction as well.
Then, we cantered. I remembered to *not* tell Theo he was a good boy, and lo and behold, he *continued* cantering!!! So now I just need to remember how the hell to steer. We were last in line at this point, with Jen leading on Hot Shot. If we fell behind a bit, Theo would cut across the circle to get behind the other horses. And then, once there, would try his damndest to bite poor Kokomo on the ass. I tried to push him out, with varying degrees of very minor success. And oh my. Normally, when I've 'gotten' Theo to canter, it has involved me kicking a whole bunch, and the instructor getting after him with a lunge whip. And then he does this little itty bitty canter, and then stops. This time though, his canter was *HUGE*!!! It was almost hard to stay in the saddle!!
But I got him to canter almost every time I asked, and the times he *didn't* canter when I asked, he picked it up the second time I asked, so that was pretty awesome. But I need to learn to keep him on a circle, and control his speed so he doesn't zoom up to the horse in front of him and take a nip, and also figure out how to get him more collected, which I think will help with the speed issue.
But yay for cantering! And now that I'm getting the hang of it with Theo, I'm quite certain Marty will move me to a different horse next week. =p
Lots of trotting. We did a bunch of voltes. I'm pretty good at doing a volte, but when I am in between the other two horses, and they basically make a hard turn, go out however far, and then make a sharp u-turn back to the wall, I can't really make a nice, round volte. So we worked on round voltes. We did many changes of direction as well.
Then, we cantered. I remembered to *not* tell Theo he was a good boy, and lo and behold, he *continued* cantering!!! So now I just need to remember how the hell to steer. We were last in line at this point, with Jen leading on Hot Shot. If we fell behind a bit, Theo would cut across the circle to get behind the other horses. And then, once there, would try his damndest to bite poor Kokomo on the ass. I tried to push him out, with varying degrees of very minor success. And oh my. Normally, when I've 'gotten' Theo to canter, it has involved me kicking a whole bunch, and the instructor getting after him with a lunge whip. And then he does this little itty bitty canter, and then stops. This time though, his canter was *HUGE*!!! It was almost hard to stay in the saddle!!
But I got him to canter almost every time I asked, and the times he *didn't* canter when I asked, he picked it up the second time I asked, so that was pretty awesome. But I need to learn to keep him on a circle, and control his speed so he doesn't zoom up to the horse in front of him and take a nip, and also figure out how to get him more collected, which I think will help with the speed issue.
But yay for cantering! And now that I'm getting the hang of it with Theo, I'm quite certain Marty will move me to a different horse next week. =p