Lesson 6/19/12

Well, school's out, so hopefully that means I'll be able to blog about every lesson I have this summer.

For this lesson I rode Cartwheel. After we had all warmed up a little bit, we reviewed leg yielding, which is what we worked on last week. Basically, leg yielding is when your horse walks diagonally without turning their whole body. Their legs have to cross over one another for this to happen. To make your horse leg yield, you have to figure out at what point their inside hind leg will be up in the air. Then you can use your inside leg to push it over the other hind leg, thus causing them to move diagonally. It's kind of complicated, but once you do it a couple times it's pretty easy to get the hang of it. We did some exercises with that by having our horse turn the corners a little early, and then leg yielding to the outside. Cartwheel was pretty good at this, so it was fairly easy. Then we did the same thing at a trot.

At a trot, it's easier to figure out when their inside hind leg is in the air. Basically, if you're on the correct diagonal, it's when you're sitting up in the saddle. However, it's harder to actually use your inside leg to push them over. It's just kind of awkward to do. Again though, Cartwheel was pretty good at this.

After we had done more of these exercises, we moved to the big ring to work on cantering. Our instructor told us that using leg yielding is actually the correct way to pick up a canter, as opposed to what we all normally do. I learned that to pick up a canter you have to sit down and thump with your outside leg, which is correct. But this time, the instructor wanted us to leg yield before doing all of that. She said it helps your horse to pick up the canter because that way your horse is already bent the right direction and is on the correct footing. We took turns practicing this. We had to trot until we got to the corner, trot a circle, leg yield to the outside, and then ask for the canter. I went first, and it worked really well. I got a good canter from Cartwheel, but she stopped pretty quickly and then it was someone else's turn. The instructor said my canter was good, I just had to work on keeping my knees bent more and keeping Cartwheel going. On my next turn, I did the same thing, but this time I was able to canter most of the way around the ring. After that we changed directions. This time, it was harder for me to get Cartwheel to bend, but I still got her to canter.

Next we all got to work on jumping a little bit. The instructor set up a line of poles, which we all trotted over in our two-point. Then, she had everyone else walk while she set up some higher jumps for me. I did the line successfully the first time, so each time she raised the cross rail a little bit higher. On the last height, Cartwheel went over it but came out in a trot, which the instructor said was unusual because usually at that height horses canter out of the jump. Even if she didn't canter out of it, it was really fun to be able to jump a little bit again. I really hope next week I'm able to jump even higher ones. And I really think I'm getting better at cantering, which is really exciting, so I'm definitely looking forward to next week's lesson!