What a wonderful ride today. I can't say enough, I felt so good, so at ease, everything was so much easier. Even when Cypress was being a butt I never felt like I was wrestling him, just correcting and directing and making him listen. Catherine was once again very complimentary about how it went and how I was learning and riding. It felt very good.
Heck, on the drive out there I was smiling big and thinking "I get to ride!"
We started the lesson on a good note, Catherine wanted me to make it a huge pain for Cypress to misbehave from the beginning, so just getting the mounting block up to him was a big production. He likes to scurry his butt around as soon as you step on the block, so when he did that this time I made him walk all the way around it, stop, then try again. Just to make it more work for him to disobey than do what he knows he should.
He got the hint quickly.
If there were two themes for the lesson, it was that and saddle position. Make it harder for him to do the wrong thing than the right, and try to stay in the right position in the saddle with my weight balanced correctly. I seem to lean to the left too much, if a foot is going to come out of the stirrup it is always the right one.
Nothing new really technique-wise, just more practice at what we've been working on and trying to get it all working smoothly together, and it was very close this time. Almost moved on to canter today but not quite, that may happen on Friday.
I'm liking the new facility, both in terms of location and what they have. The last one we were at had a very long and narrow arena, this one is closer to square which I think makes it a lot easier to practice and is a lot more forgiving on mistakes and strangeness of behavior on the horse's part.
I'm really looking forward to Friday. Oh and I haven't told Catherine about this blog yet, I'm going to email her in a minute to let her know. Hope she likes it!
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