Yesterdays riding Lesson

So Yesterday as you all know I got to ride Gatsby again but I didn't really have time because of how tired I was to tell you what I did during the lesson. I got there early like I always do so that I could spend some time just grooming him and tacking up and when I got there one of the ladies who has her own horse there said 'its only real riders that ride in this weather' which made me laugh. The weather at this point was a lot of rain but it was very fine rain making it look almost like it was a wet fog, was really weird and when I looked at the Arena it was like a lake at the bottom end of the school and then some big puddles at the top end of the school. Fiona said that if it had been a driving wind and really heavy rain that we would not have rode but because it was like it was she said we might as well because in the world of horses we don't get time off because its raining and its cold and we don't want to get wet. So we might as well get used to this now which was fine by me! 

To start with we spent about 10 to 15 minutes walking around allowing the horses to warm up and during this time Gatsby was showing a really good stretch down his neck and he wasn't bothered by the puddles but we didn't think he would be too bothered by the water because he used to do a lot of Cross Country. With the weather as it is at the minute we decided that we weren't going to work on anything that was too complicated and instead were going to spend the majority of the time working on the outline which is something that I tend to struggle with because of my elbows and I can keep my left elbow tucked in but I struggle to keep my right elbow tucked in. However we did get some really nice outlines in places and I did manage to get some nice halts and then get an outline while halting and walk on while keeping the outline which is something that I was really happy with! While in walk we did the exercise that I mentioned yesterday. To start with you would walk up the centre line turning on it from the right at either A or C, then you would walk about 5 steps and start doing a 10 metre circle to the left, making sure to hit the track, get a nice bend and come back on to the centre line straight, then you would walk another 5 or 6 steps and do this to the right repeating this process all the way to the top you would then make a change of rein turning to the left instead of turning back to the right. 

We then moved on to riding the leg yield in the walk and trying to maintain an outline, I had a couple of successful attempts at this but then I also had some were I wasn't quite turning my shoulder back enough and because of doing this I wasn't allowing him to cross his legs enough and he was walking out through his shoulder, which was a pain. We then did some trot work trying to maintain the outline going from the walk in to the trot. I did a couple of times but also had some bad transitions. We originally went back to walk in the biggest puddle however towards the end me and Gatsby kept on trotting through the puddle adding some leg-yields and also managing to maintain an outline, at one point I did lose the outline though and then completely lost the leg yield. So that was my lesson. 

Until Next Time 

A Girl With A Dream