Working Trot Rising at M

So now the real work starts, our first official dressage lesson. I recently moved her to a barn that has a dressage trainer that comes in for a couple people for lessons. Its very rare to find someone who will travel around like that so you dont have to be at an official dressage barn (which somehow raises the price of board automatically) with a trainer there full time (wether you take lessons or not). I was able to observe lessons a couple times over the last 6 months and I very much liked her style. Explains things well, is good at what she does and does a ton of POSITIVE reinforcement. Shes been fairly booked but one of the boarders horses has been lame so she was able to fit me in, for a while at least. Not sure whats going to happen going forward.

So the day before I rode in our new saddle for I think only the second time (darn pleasure shows getting in the way). She was an aboslute PILL until I got fed up and got a crop. All she has to do is SEE it and we are good, but sometimes it makes her a little too hyper just knowing I'm carrying it, so I dont do it very often. I think she has some residual halter training whip fears from before I had her. (Except for when I show her in halter, she damn near falls asleep she so doesnt care, thankfully she wins on the merits of her good looks and confirmation instead of how wild eyed and snorty she gets). So that combined with our somewhat remaining cantering issues had me telling our trainer prior to the lesson how BAD we were going to be. Especially since we hadnt taken a lesson of any sort in many years. I was sure I was a complete mess, that she was discombobulated somewhere and we were going to be told in no uncertain terms that we sucked. After all the last year of hunt pleasure hadnt been going so well, tho the new saddle is helping some this year.

So we start off just walking the whole arena, little bit of trotting, just so she can do a quick eval on us before we get serious. Then asks us to start trotting circles around her. Now trotting nice circles has ALWAYS been a problem, they tend to be more like OVALs or get cut in somewhere. I also warned her of this. I started off trotting, unfortunately, in whats usually our worse direction, clockwise. It wasnt long before she had us stop and adjust a few things. First off my saddle was shifting, Diva is a PRO at blowing up as Im cinching up and always do it in increments and again in the arena, but really I need a shorter girth. I knew that, do you know how hard it is to find a 22! I have one on ebay right now Im watching but finding one locally, not so easy. Besides that I needed to get my elbows away from my sides which is more the norm for our huntseat classes, and forward but still bent and take up on the reins instead. Beyond that, its a matter of my biggest bad habit, looking down. I know I do it, I try, but when Im riding all by myself and so concerned with where her head is (this all started in western pleasure), its really really hard to break that. Once we changed those little things and made sure I was not leaning in to the circle, wallah, suddenly we could do mostly decent circles! (yep always the rider, never the horse). So we trotted and we trotted and we changed directions and trotted some more (much better in that direction anyway). Other than a short walk break or 2 I swear we trotted for an hour! We both were a bit out of shape for that :) But Diva behaved very well, unlike the day before, and proved me a liar.

So everything is going very well surprisingly and shes just loving Diva and how she moves. She has a couple other Arabs in lessons at other barns but she said Diva has the most sport horse potential of all of them. So we are getting to the end of our lesson and Im thinking good, she wont ask for a canter this first time. WRONG! I said ok, but it isnt going to be pretty. I turned around so we could start with our better direction. Well Diva had to go prove me a liar again and did the best canter shes ever done with a snaffle. Trainer says, what are you talking about thats great! Little stinker just has to keep me on my toes doesnt she, never know what to expect from day to day.

So the trainer loves her, said no problem showing in August and that I led her to believe we were going to be just awful when we are far from it! It was a great lesson!