Is There an Echo in Here?

Time to play a little bit of catch up! The day after my lesson on Cinder, I had a lesson on Peebs. Since it was almost two weeks ago (oops) I can't remember the full details, but it was a good lesson. We worked mostly on smoothing things out, mainly little tweaks to my turn or approach. Not necessarily a challenging lesson, but a good one nonetheless. 

The only media from said lesson

I do remember I had one semi-bogey fence, a single on a short diagonal going right to left. The first couple of times we did it, the distance came up pretty well but I couldn't see it. I just kept my leg on and contact through my reins and let Peebs figure it out. It wasn't a bad fence but I felt like I couldn't commit to the distance. The second time we did it, my trainer had walked around the arena and saw our approach from a different angle and suggested I go a half a stride deeper before turning off the rail, and think about using more left leg to turn him instead of my right rein. I did what she said, and what do you know, it worked. I could see the distance (it was a touch long) and was able to close my leg and move Peebs up to it. We did it a second time and again, I was able to see my distance about three strides out and commit to it. 

She's slowly starting to fill out a bit

A few days later I had another lesson on Cinder. It was about 70* at 10am and Cinder was fairly certain it was too hot to work. Mare has a lazy streak. Like I actually had to sit deep and leg her on and go to my whip to keep her cantering. She's one wild and crazy 4 year old. 

In our trot work, Trainer A had me focus on keeping her shoulders in line. Cinder likes to pop her right shoulder going left and really drift out. I got called out a couple of times for being too handsy, and A told me to think about turning her more from my right leg and less left rein. Sound familiar? We also worked on spiraling in and out on a circle, then continuing down the long side keeping the feel of spiraling her out. Which is what my trainer (J) has me do with Peebs on the flat. A words it slightly differently than J does, but same concept. It's been really nice to hear the same things from both of them and to get it drilled into my head twice as often. Who knows, maybe it'll actually stick.

 

I have also ridden Cinder twice now outside of lessons. A was gone over the weekend at a show and Cinder was going to have four days off. I'm sure she would have been perfectly fine, but since I had the time, and I really, really like riding her, I figured I'd bop around on her. I was a little nervous when I got on the first time flying solo, but Cinder was great. We only did about 25 mins of walk trot both days, trying to work on spiraling in and out like we did in our lesson.  Don't get me wrong, lessoning on her is great, but having the time to play around a bit and figure her out on my own was really helpful. The honeymoon phase is in full effect and I'm going to enjoy every minute of it!