alobear | It's all about the instructor

Today's riding lesson was awful.

I was on Flossie again. She seems to be my regular horse now, and I'm not complaining because she's great, but I'm trying to decide if I ought to ask to ride some different horses sometimes as well. Flossie's a delight to ride and she does everything she's supposed to, but she's not a challenge and she's not pushing me to be a better rider. But, first thing on a Sunday morning, when I'm wishing I was still in bed, it's hard to say, "I don't want to ride the lovely horse, give me a harder one instead!"

Anyway, I'm glad I was on Flossie today, because Dominic wasn't there and we had a woman instructing instead. She didn't ask us our names and didn't tell us hers, which annoyed me right off. There were three individual lessons going on in our part of the school, and our instructor spent most of the lesson chatting to the other instructors in the corner and not paying any attention to us at all. Every now and then she would seem to remember we were there and call out, "Do a circle", or "Go into sitting trot". But there was no structure to the lesson and a lot of the time we were just left trotting round and round with nothing to do. Her idea of working in sitting trot was actually just to tell us to go sitting and then leave us trotting round the school five or six times.

She put Jigsaw, who's a pony, at the front of the ride, so I had to keep reining Flossie in to stay behind him, which didn't make Flossie's mood any better, as she hates having her mouth pulled. I'm usually at the front of the ride with her, which is where she should be as she's quite big. Also, there was a man riding Molly at the back of the ride, and he was riding her really badly, but the instructor just yelled at him occasionally and never gave him any pointers as to how to improve. There were three or four things I could see that he should be doing differently, but she never mentioned any of them.

I don't think it's just that Dominic's excellent lessons have spoiled me, because I've had several other instructors in between times who have been fine. This woman was just awful and it ruined the lesson for me completely.

At the end of the lesson, she told me I ought to be in the advanced lesson. Now, there's no point in me going for false modesty here, because I was told at my assessment lesson back in March that I was good enough to the go into the A lesson, and I know it's true. I'm certainly too good for the awful woman's idea of a B lesson, and I tend to find the B lessons taught by people like Tom, Adam and Ben a little boring, too. However, Dominic's B lessons are so interesting and challenging that they might as well be A lessons and I'm still not confident that I'm fit enough for the A lessons. Also, the A lesson at 9am on a Sunday already has 6 or 7 people in it.

I went to the office at the end of my lesson and asked if Dominic would be back next week. I was told he's freelance and so sometimes he's just not there. But, when he is there, he will teach the B lesson at 9am on a Sunday. He's only missed 2 lessons out of 7, so I'm happy to stay where I am for now. After all, I've been taught by four or five different instructors at Trent Park and today's instructor is the only one I really didn't like, so hopefully Dominic's absences won't be a problem. If I get today's instructor again, I'm fully prepared to pay my money and just go straight home. I can't wait till next week, when Dominic's back!

A long term plan might be to ride some different horses in Dominic's lessons until I really feel like I'm back up to the standard I was ten years ago, and then ask to move into the A lesson and ride Flossie every week again! We'll see.