Riding Lesson

I had my second lesson with Sarah today. It was a frantic scramble when I first got to the barn, my Mom had to get the trailer out of the ring from yesterday and Werther had to be chased since he missed going out yesterday. I was just walking him to ring as Sarah got there though, so I wasn't late. Today we worked on Werther accepting contact (Werther in: "really? Do I have to?"). The hardest thing for me was maintaining even contact with the outside rein, especially on a circle, I am used to using an opening rein with my outside hand when getting a horse to bend. Werther kept trying to see how much he could get away with, he much preferred to stop or slow down instead of go forward into the bridle. It may be a long time since he had to do that, but Werther knew darn well what we asking, he just was really testing to see if he had to do it. We did canter transitions and I had some trouble getting the left lead, Werther wanted to do his extended trot instead or on the circle pick up the right lead at first. When I came down from the trot to the canter, we had a lovely trot which got the frame and contact I was going to achieve earlier and I was able to get some nice canter transitions from that trot. As Sarah said: "He finally remembered he likes this", which I think is true. Sarah and I think it will be a good idea to use that canter transition, when he starts to get lazy about getting forward and on the bit. Aside: The other really interesting thing I took away from the lesson was the micro management of the bend in the neck in the circle, which is something that does not really come up when you ride in hunters, but it makes sense that you don't want to bend his neck more than he bends his body.