Riding Gatsby yesterday :)

So yesterday me and mum and my nephew went up to west hallam riding centre to brave the cold weather so that I could ride Gatsby, i got him all tacked up, brushed and nice and shiny and all though it was cold I loved every single minute of it. We decided that we were going to do some pole work, to give us a break from the complicated moves that we have been doing mainly the shoulder in, but that we would still try to incorporate the moves in to warming them up and through out the lesson. 

The main thing from the lesson that I was buzzing about was the fact that for the majority of the lesson me and Gatsby worked in a really good outline, he dropped his head down when asked to and was perfect he's such a good fella when he wants to be that is, so the trot work was great and the main improvement was that I managed to keep my elbows in which is something that I am practicing now while I write this so that I get in to the habit of doing it while I'm riding, because I think the reason that I struggle with it is the fact that I don't always tend to think about it, so it is something that I am working on but I also need to work on keeping my hips moving more because they are quite stiff which is really odd and something I hadn't realised til last week.

Then we decided to do some work going over poles, we did this to make it something that was more interesting for the horse to ride and something that wasn't as boring, because riding on a straight line can get really boring and Gatsby deffo lets us know when he gets bored as you can imagine, his head starts being tossed about and we all know. We only did basic trotting poles but it was something that helped get a really bouncy trot and the hard thing was managing to keep the bouncy trot will reading round the rest of the school to get back to the poles again. But also remembering to work in an outline because when you do it really opens the trot up making it easier for them to go over the poles and making them have a much nicer stride.

There will be pictures for you all to see of me and Gatsby, but it wasn't mum that took the pictures it was Elaine who works at West Hallam Riding Centre so I won't be able to show you the pictures until I can nick them off facebook and there might also be a couple of video's for you all. The photo's and the Video's show Fiona's technique for teaching and also me and Gatsby, Jaimeleigh and Big Rocky and Alice and Rascal who is being bought back into work after being lame.