on a not so depressing note
Had a pretty awesome lesson on Friday.
A new session started, Linda combined two of the classes into one. The last two sessions there were only 3 of us. Now, there's seven. Myself, Raven, Cameron from our class, and we're joining a class comprised of Sarah, Sarah's mom whose name escapes me, Beth who was in one of my classes before, and Janet. We managed to keep our spacing for almost the entire lesson. I was at the end, on Doc, and so I lagged a bit sometimes. Lessee, there was me:Doc, Raven:Sally, Cameron:Kokomo, Beth:Fifi, Sarah:Millie, Sarah's Mom:Freckles, Janet:Theo. (not in that order)
Before lesson started, Sarah was all about not riding Millie. When the lesson was over, she wouldn't stop ranting about how wonderful Millie was n such. =) Janet did what I thought was an amazing job with Theo... He always gets bratty with me, but she managed to keep him caught up to the rest of the group.
We even managed to get all seven of us to do right and left turns across the arena in parallel without anyone having to slow down or wait for anyone else. It was really cool. All in unison n such.
Doc kept trying to cut the corners. I was fighting with him pretty much the whole lesson. I'm winning more than I'm losing though, and that's good. Also, the one time he was gonna cut, I kicked hard with the inside leg to keep him on the wall, and he cantered a few steps, but he didn't cut the corner, so I totally count that as a win for me. I also learned that I need to use the crop with him at the beginning of the lesson. I used it on him *once* to get him to speed up some, and for the rest of the lesson, whenever we switched directions and I switched which hand the crop was in, he kinda flipped out and sped way up. Which was a good thing. He also didn't cut the corners as much if I let the crop just sorta rest near his shoulder.
But all in all, it was a really good lesson. I had fun, and it was challenging, yet not spastic, so a nice way to start a new session.
A new session started, Linda combined two of the classes into one. The last two sessions there were only 3 of us. Now, there's seven. Myself, Raven, Cameron from our class, and we're joining a class comprised of Sarah, Sarah's mom whose name escapes me, Beth who was in one of my classes before, and Janet. We managed to keep our spacing for almost the entire lesson. I was at the end, on Doc, and so I lagged a bit sometimes. Lessee, there was me:Doc, Raven:Sally, Cameron:Kokomo, Beth:Fifi, Sarah:Millie, Sarah's Mom:Freckles, Janet:Theo. (not in that order)
Before lesson started, Sarah was all about not riding Millie. When the lesson was over, she wouldn't stop ranting about how wonderful Millie was n such. =) Janet did what I thought was an amazing job with Theo... He always gets bratty with me, but she managed to keep him caught up to the rest of the group.
We even managed to get all seven of us to do right and left turns across the arena in parallel without anyone having to slow down or wait for anyone else. It was really cool. All in unison n such.
Doc kept trying to cut the corners. I was fighting with him pretty much the whole lesson. I'm winning more than I'm losing though, and that's good. Also, the one time he was gonna cut, I kicked hard with the inside leg to keep him on the wall, and he cantered a few steps, but he didn't cut the corner, so I totally count that as a win for me. I also learned that I need to use the crop with him at the beginning of the lesson. I used it on him *once* to get him to speed up some, and for the rest of the lesson, whenever we switched directions and I switched which hand the crop was in, he kinda flipped out and sped way up. Which was a good thing. He also didn't cut the corners as much if I let the crop just sorta rest near his shoulder.
But all in all, it was a really good lesson. I had fun, and it was challenging, yet not spastic, so a nice way to start a new session.