Lesson 1/2/12

First lesson of 2012! :)

When I arrived at the barn and saw the list of who was riding who, under my name it had three horses: Kilo, Captain, or Daisy. I talked to my instructor, and since Daisy was in a lesson at that time I had to choose between Kilo or Captain. My instructor sounded like she wanted me to ride Kilo, and he seemed like a cool horse so I chose to ride him. Unfortunately he has rain rot, which is some kind of skin disease (click the link to read more). Because he has this it makes him really sensitive to being touched anywhere he has it, so grooming was pretty difficult. Every time I even went near Kilo with a brush he tried to bite me. I just put my hand on him and waited till he stopped before I brushed him. I was extra cautious around his back legs, which he tried to kick me with, and I skipped picking his back hooves altogether.

Once up in the ring, I got on Kilo and I don't know if it was just me, but he felt really tall for some reason. I thought it might be because I hadn't ridden the week before or something. But anyway, I got used to Kilo's walk a little by walking in big circles and I practiced adding in energy by exaggerating my seat movements (I don't know if that makes any sense to you guys at all). That worked pretty well, so we moved onto trotting.

My instructor had me try and get Kilo to trot by just exaggerating my seat movements a lot, but that didn't work very well so she had me add in some leg pressure as well, alternately squeezing my legs. This worked fairly quickly, so I just trotted around the ring a few times, still going in big circles. Then my instructor told me to just sit the trot, without posting, and to give leg pressure until Kilo pushes me into posting, rather than me doing all the work. This probably sounds confusing, but what she was looking for was enough energy for me to actually be sort of forced out of the saddle. It took a little while to get the hang of this, but once I felt Kilo actually do that, it made a huge difference.

I basically practiced that for the majority of the lesson, so by the end my legs were killing me from doing so much sitting trot. After that my instructor had me trot one big circle, and then cut the corner of the ring as I came out of that circle. Then I had to use my inside leg and post diagonally to push Kilo over to the outside of the ring, which worked a couple of times. My instructor had me do this because she said it helped Kilo prepare himself for a canter, which is what I did next. I did the same thing as before - I trotted a circle, and as I came out of the circle I pushed Kilo over to the outside. This time though I asked him to canter as soon as he was on the outside of the ring. He cantered almost immediately, and I found that I actually liked his canter! I did that maybe two more times, and that was the end of the lesson.

Overall it was a very satisfying lesson, especially compared to the slightly disastrous one that I'd had two weeks before. And I was very happy to canter again after so long!