I guess I can stop calling them private lessons since that's what all of them are at this point but it helps to keep track of it so I can make sure I'm paying Catherine for everything correctly.
It was cold out there today but nowhere near as bad as the last one. It felt like it has been forever since I've been on a horse and it is a bit more than three weeks but less than a month.
I enjoy being able to use phrases like "It felt good to be back in the saddle again" literally.
Due to the bad weather the stables have been having all sorts of issues and Cypress had only had one lesson, yesterday, in three weeks, so he was out of practice too. It showed. He also hadn't had much socialization time with other horses, so he was a very interesting combination of affectionate and nuzzly and really badly behaved and disobedient.
Most of it went well but the second I took the halter off him to put the bridle on he walked right over to some food and began munching. Catherine had warned me that he was partially in a bad mood because she had him on a diet but it was ridiculous, he absolutely would not listen and it took all my body weight and strength to get him to behave for half a second, then he'd go back to it. A woman nearby stepped in to help and showed me where to pinch him on the nose (lightly) to get his attention, and that worked just long enough to get another halter on him and get him backed away from the food far enough I could move him to the arena and put his bridle on there.
Catherine joined me in the arena and noticed I had the saddle too far back and when she tried to adjust that he was being very fidgety and bad. Weirdly I had no problems putting his bridle on except that I once again put the part that should have gone under his chin into his mouth and we had to fish it out.
The lesson itself went pretty well, he wasn't listening and I was out of practice so we took it very slow and went back to the basics. I spent a lot of effort trying to regain the feeling of being correctly positioned in the saddle, applying just enough pressure, and just remembering what I'm doing. We worked a bit on a style of turn that involved bending his head into the turn (since he was wanting to bend away), applying pressure with the inside leg to keep him moving to the outside and then the outside leg back to keep him honest with his rump. It started feeling pretty good by the end.
Tried it at a jog (needed stirrups again to get him to listen) and was somewhat successful.
It felt good despite the frustrations of being out of practice, I was very happy to be out there and am really looking forward to having a couple lessons next week and getting back in practice again.
Comments