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Freewheeling
Sep. 2nd, 2007 11:27 amI had requested a horse other than Herbie for today's lesson, so I got put back on Abbey instead. I'm sure there must be more horses I could ride (Joe, Flossie, Cassie, Flash all come to mind...) but they seem to like to keep me on the same ones all the time. Hey ho.
Abbey and I both worked really hard today, but it was worth because we saw some definite improvement throughout the lesson. To begin with, Abbey wasn't really paying attention and seemed very confused as to what we were supposed to be doing. She doesn't react well to open order work because she likes to follow other horses, so I had trouble getting her to do circles away from the ride, but we managed it in the end.
Work without stirrups is never a problem on Abbey because she's very smooth, and will happily trot quite slowly so as not to bounce me around too much. We worked on leg position, and then did some canter work without stirrups, riding on a 20 metre circle and taking turns to canter to the back of the ride so the canter stretches were quite short. I learned that my canter transition still needs a lot of work and that I get quite unbalanced when I'm trying to get Abbey to canter.
Then we took our stirrups back and did walk to canter transitions as a ride, which was great fun. Abbey had difficulty to begin with - she's never easy to get into canter at the best of times - but she got the hang of it towards the end and got a little overexcited on the last one, shooting off and making me lose a stirrup.
However, by the end of the lesson, my leg position felt better, my seat felt more secure, and Abbey was responding to my legs a lot more, so all in all it was a successful lesson.
Abbey and I both worked really hard today, but it was worth because we saw some definite improvement throughout the lesson. To begin with, Abbey wasn't really paying attention and seemed very confused as to what we were supposed to be doing. She doesn't react well to open order work because she likes to follow other horses, so I had trouble getting her to do circles away from the ride, but we managed it in the end.
Work without stirrups is never a problem on Abbey because she's very smooth, and will happily trot quite slowly so as not to bounce me around too much. We worked on leg position, and then did some canter work without stirrups, riding on a 20 metre circle and taking turns to canter to the back of the ride so the canter stretches were quite short. I learned that my canter transition still needs a lot of work and that I get quite unbalanced when I'm trying to get Abbey to canter.
Then we took our stirrups back and did walk to canter transitions as a ride, which was great fun. Abbey had difficulty to begin with - she's never easy to get into canter at the best of times - but she got the hang of it towards the end and got a little overexcited on the last one, shooting off and making me lose a stirrup.
However, by the end of the lesson, my leg position felt better, my seat felt more secure, and Abbey was responding to my legs a lot more, so all in all it was a successful lesson.
