Lesson Recap - Snow Day

Well today was overall a great lesson - after we worked out some kincks.... 

We warmed up walk trot on a very loose rein and just kind of worked on settling without getting in there faces.

 It was really fun because my instructor rode with us, I've seen her ride and compete so many times but I always forget just how good she is. She can post the trot and her leg doesn't even move at all when she pushes weight into her stirrups to stand. 

After we warmed up walk trot, we did a very similar exercise to the one that we did last week, a serpentine with trot poles. The first part was two trot poles at the bottom of the ring and he did them very well then we went across the middle of the ring and changed our bend over a single pole, then wrapped around to trot a small 18'' vertical at the top of the ring and then came back though the single pole in the middle and then over the the two at the bottom of the ring.

 At this point I was starting to get a little nervous because we were not riding it well at all and Sindri's owner had come out to watch... At this point my instructor told me to just come trot a circle in the center of the ring and then had me walk.

 She told me my upper body was coming forward and I kept crossing my hand over his neck and it was causing his shoulder to bulge out to the left. She told me to try and keep my hips and shoulders open so I could stay taller and to really focus on not crossing my hand over his neck, she also said to slow my posting and do very soft half halts each time I posted she showed me what I was doing wrong and how I could fix it. She demonstrated on the horse she was riding -Beau- how when she crosses her inside hand over he instantly dropped his left shoulder and he went sideways where-as when she help contact with her right hand opened a bit more to the inside he was soft and had a beautiful circle, same with the leaning forward. 

After that I did my circle again and used all my brainpower to work on doing all the things she said. He felt AMAZING!!!

 I guess I just always kind of rode without even thinking about my position to much because it worked for Brooks and Cyrus, now that I'm on Sindri he's fixing my riding, and not that it was bad before but he's going to make me a much better rider!!! 

After we worked on all that we got to do some jumping, we did a cross rail one stride line coming towards the barn twice and the twice away from the barn with the second jump put up.

With the jump being put up it felt like we were flying, he naturally overjumps every thing (unless trotting a cross rail) so it felt like he cleared the standard. 

Going once...

Going twice...

SOLD!!!

Sindri's owner was in the judge's stand while we rode so she got this AMAZING picture of us jumping which is very helpful because my video-er was working in the car 😂 (I'm very obsessed with this picture right now)

After we rode we walked the track around the arenas and the S who was riding my sisters old lease odin (she did amazing with odin in our lesson) ending up eating dirt. Odin decided because he hadn't seen birds in 24 hours them flying in the area next to us was THE scariest thing ever so he just started prancing sideways (which got all the other horses excited) and then shot forward bucked S off and ran all the way back to the barn to go and bother the mares out the the pasture. S was fine (she just had to walk the rest of the way to the barn) and Odin was caught (before he caused to much drama)

Once we got back to the barn (without anymore drama) Sindri's owner came over and said she loved how cute we were together and put his new blanket on him to adjust the size and chatted with us for a bit. Each ride gets me more and more excited for what's going to come in the future and I can't wait!!

Around 1:00 today it started snowing (luckily after we rode) it's not really sticking to the ground because it rained first, but it's still snowing!!

My puppy LOVES the snow!!