Lesson 18

The dogs need to be leashed now. Poor Pia... at least she found a good place to dig.

Today I got to ride Gretsky again. But no canter. The morning was actually quite cool, I was even wearing a little jacket to start!

Today we were working on half halts. I started with trotting a serpentine through the arena, and when I passed through the chairs, I was supposed to slow to a walk, then trot on again. Once I got that, we went to halting between the chairs, and then trotting on. Unfortunately, Gretsky decided my telling him to stop actually meant he should just walk really, really, really slowly (I think he thought he might get carrots if he got to Anna, she was not of the same opinion). So it took quite a while to convince the horse that stop did in fact mean STOP! Once I could actually get the halt, we moved on to asking him to stop, and when he started to, asking him to go again (which is a half halt?). By the time we were done with that, Anna's next lesson was arriving.

I don't know if you can make out what's going on in these pictures, but this is what I saw when leaving. That's Domino and (I think) Ikarus. They're both holding onto a rubber ball, and they were walking around in circles. It was just a very odd sight.

Lessons 16 and 17

I'll start with last week. I got to ride Domino, and I got to canter! Domino's canter, much like his trot, is big and springy. The movement of canter is easier to sit though, so as long as I kept my back loose, and moved with him, it was really fun.

Was still having steering issues though. Apparently, when I want to go right, I should be pulling the left rein more. If that makes no sense to you, join the club. If you understand, please share. It seems very counter intuitive to me.

This week I got to ride Gretsky again. After Domino, Gretsky's trot seems very small and stunted. He's also much harder to keep moving. But still a fun ride.

See his neck there? That's not what it's supposed to look like, and that's what we were working on the whole lesson (canter on Gretsky comes next week). The picture below is a little blurry, but that's closer to how he should be looking.

Next week I should get to canter on Gretsky, and work on getting him give me his head... This week every time he looked like he does above, it was instantly followed by him tossing his nose in the air. Oh well, I'll get there.