i'm here to update you all on my saturday lesson. first off, i still have that slight fracture in my left wrist, which is bothering me. but not enough to stop me from riding, obviously! i have a show coming up in 3 weeks, and it will be my Training Level debut, so there's much work to be done and no time to take off! i'm learning all three tests, just in case.
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| one foot on the ground! |
saturday was the first real scorcher of a day we've had since last year; it was 86 and sunny at 10:00am. i am consistently working only with Ruby for the time being, as she is a fancier mover, and goes into a good frame; she will be the one moving me up the lower levels for the next few seasons. she was responsive right from the get-go; as she has recently realized that i'm not going to put up with laziness anymore. she gave me a good powerful walk and had some spirit. she also went right into a frame without much coaxing from me; even at the walk. there were sticky points during bending warmups where she thought she'd ignore my left side, but we worked out those issues much quicker than before.
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| schooling the canter |
after warming up, Brie had us working on canter transitions, upward and downward, and i uncovered a new problem to be sorted. i have mentioned that Ruby is quite a strong mare, and when going from canter to trot she's reminiscent of a freight train. well, Brie wasn't ok with that, so we spent a good half hour or so working the canter to a point where she was nearly cantering in place and THEN asking for the trot. it took a lot of energy, but we finally were able to go from a good collected canter into a decent controlled trot. however, by that time, Ruby was pissy and ready to get back to her hay.
we weren't finished.
i loved saturday's lesson because Brie kept me and Ruby working quite awhile longer than the lesson time; there were kinks to be sorted out and after that, we needed to go through our test to start getting it in order. we did most of training test 3, but got it backwards and a bit confused; but she had us work an extra 45 minutes or so until we got satisafctory transitions. poor Ruby was entirely miffed by the end of it; and i was drenched and parched. but it was an awesome lesson, and i have a great feeling for the upcoming show. plus, even more exciting, i will actually have friends coming to support me. i had no relatives or anyone close to me at my last competition, which was a bit sad (especially since i won!) so i'm very excited to be able to have some great friends coming out to watch. i will update you all after tomorrow's lesson with megan (i have to seriously memorize these tests beforehand!) until then, here are a couple pictures that my awesome friend Adela was able to get from saturday!
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| down the centerline |
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| cantering along with a cast on |
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