It was a really nice day when I rode - it was sunny and not very cold. I rode Kilo again at 5:30, as that is the time I'll be riding at for the time being. As soon as a hooked Kilo up to the cross-ties in the barn though, he started to turn his head to try and bite me. He wouldn't even let me get near him without pinning his ears and biting. Eventually my instructor had to hold his head to make him stop doing that, which was annoying because I hate when I have to have someone help me with something like that. Anyway, after Kilo stopped biting I finished grooming and tack him up.
For me, this lesson wasn't very strenuous. A lot of my instructor's attention was on the other two riders, which is the downside of a group lesson. I pretty much did my own thing except when all of us were instructed to figure-eight or trot or something. So after some warm-up circles, we did some half halts, and I tried to work on getting Kilo to move faster. Even though I had a crop with me it was really difficult to get him to pick up the pace.
After a while, we started to trot a figure-eight. Our instructor taught us a way to try and get our horses to bend around the circles, which was by leaning slightly on the side that we wanted or horses to bend into. For example, if I wanted Kilo to bend to the inside, I would lean a little bit on my inside foot while turning from my center at the same time. It actually worked a couple times, but it was hard to get Kilo to do that when I was more focused on getting him to actually move at a good pace. Towards the end of the lesson I had to smack him on the shoulder just to get him to trot at all. That sounds harsh, but I was doing everything I could to make him trot and he just wouldn't, so I kind of needed to.
A problem I, and my instructor, have noticed is that Kilo stumbles a lot. He actually did this last week too, but in this lesson when I was trying to get him to trot Kilo's knees just sort of buckled under him, making him fall a little bit. It was really scary, as it felt like I was going to be rolled on by this huge animal! Luckily though, he got his footing and was up again fairly quickly, but after that I just stopped walking for a while. My instructor looked concerned and I was a little freaked too, because who wants a horse start falling and possibly squish them?
Soon after this happened, another rider was having problems with her horse, Chester. He was being difficult before I think, and I'm not exactly sure the details but Chester started to spook for some reason, going into a sort of canter and lifting his head up really high. He was moving towards Chachi, who of course also started to spook a little, but luckily the instructor was there to stand in front of Chester and calm him down a little. I was surprised how little Kilo was affected - we were literally just standing there watching this happen, and he didn't even shift or anything! I was grateful for that though, obviously. Three horses spooking at once would have been very bad news.
Once the spooking was over and done with, all of us got to trot a little bit longer just to end the lesson. I was actually shivering by the end because I had barely done any trotting. Despite all the problems though, it was still a pretty good lesson, and hopefully we can resolve Kilo's biting and stumbling issues next week!
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