alobear | Back in the saddle

Almost five months to the day after I broke my ankle, I donned my jodhpurs and riding boots and set of for Trent Park this morning. I have to admit I was rather apprehensive about the whole thing - more so than I'd thought I would be. I turned up half an hour early as I'd misremembered the lesson time, which didn't help with my nerves any.

Maria was sitting behind the desk in the office and remembered me - she said what I thought was, "You're with Poppy today, riding Madison - is that okay?"
My nemesis instructor? And my nemesis horse? No, thanks!

I mumbled something along the lines of, "Well, that wouldn't be my first choice..."

She glanced up and down her schedule and then uttered the miraculous words, "Why don't you take Joe instead?"

Things were looking up - Joe is one of my favourite horses at Trent Park, and would actually have been my first choice if I'd been given one. Even better, it turned out my instructor was Pippa, not Poppy, which also turned out to be a real blessing. I told her all about the accident with Joker, and how all I really wanted to do was get on a horse again and see if my ankle was up to it. Pippa was lovely - sympathetic, reassuring, encouraging, and an excellent instructor. Joe even stood still at the mounting block, which has never happened before, so I started the lesson feeling confident and secure.

What followed was a really interesting lesson. We started with walk and trot transitions to give me a chance to settle into it, and get Joe listening to me. Then we did a really cool circling exercise to work on Joe's bend, followed by a canter on each rein. The canter transitions were a bit a mess - unexpectedly so, as I don't normally have any trouble getting Joe into canter - but at least I managed it. By that time, I was completely knackered, so we ended up doing leg yield in walk and trot, with varying success.

Pippa was very solicitous of my comfort all the way through, without being overbearing, and the ankle held up fine. It's twingeing a bit now, but I think that was inevitable, and it's really fine. I even manged to dismount without having to resort to the indignified slither, which was quite an achievement.

So, all in all, a very good morning. I have to admit, though, that I'm not sure I want to go back to lessons regularly. I still feel how I did at the start of the year - I'm don't want to ride for exercise (that's what the gym is for) and I'm not that bothered about honing my dressage skills (too much like hard work) - I'd rather just ride occasionally for fun, which means hacking. I just need to take things a bit more steadily and learn to enjoy riding, even when I'm not carreering round the woods out of control!

Still, I got back on a horse, and had a very good lesson, so yay!