Sunday, November 8, 2015. Lesson @TC
I got to ride Dante today!! Meagan and I talked a bit and we’ve decided that I’m going to do a little bit of dressage. It fits Dante and I well, so why not?
While I was picking his hooves after my lesson he was such a goofball. So he was trying to reach his grain, right? Well the silly horse had backed up too far to reach it with his lead rope. So, while I was holding one hoof he bunny hopped over to his grain, using me as a leg! Of course I couldn’t hold him up and he stumbled over, but what a silly horse. I really love him.
Dante already got worked that day so I didn’t bother to longe him. He had a little bit of spunk and moved a lot faster than he usual does, at least at the beginning. By the end he was his usual, lazy self.
We warmed him up with a very loose rein and he responded pretty well. He didn’t stretch 100% but it was still pretty nice.
A few minutes later it started to rain. Poor Dante. He hates the rain. In the top left corner of the arena (near F) there’s a broken drainpipe and it makes this atrocious noise, even to my less sensitive ears. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Over and over and over again. It drives all the horses bonkers, even good boys like Dante. Last year it was so bad we couldn’t even take him into that corner of the arena he was so spooky. This year he just lifted his head a bit and snorted once or twice. I’m so glad to see improvement with him!
When we were warmed up at walk and trot we went to canter. He was pretty lazy at picking it up for the entire lesson, but at least it was better at first. With Monte I probably would have used crop, but Dante and I were just getting used to each other again and he was being such a good boy already I didn’t push it and only used it once, just to let him know I wasn’t afraid to use it.
We went into canter, and it was pretty good. Meagan told me to practice doing circles and opening my shoulder, something I’m pretty bad at. My first one was okay, and the few after that were ugly. I over-opened my rein, didn’t have enough seat, and not enough shoulder open so he didn’t move to the right spot and threw his head up. It may have taken me a few tries to figure it out, but when I did we probably looked beautiful, or at least more beautiful than we usually do!
The last few circles I really had to keep my leg on. When we were going downhill he would totally break back into the trot, which was really annoying but understandable. I fixed it and we did good!
For our last exercise we did figure 8 trot poles. In these you extend on the rails, unextend (I dunno the word, sorry) in the corners, and quickly turn down the center line at A or C (depending on which direction you’re going) and go over the poles. If the poles are set far apart, you extend over them. If they’re not, you unextend. Now, for someone lucky enough to have a large arena, this is easy peasy, or at least way easier. With someone like me, the only large arena is the outside one, which is currently rained out. So yeah, it’s hard to turn in a 60 x 40 meter arena, although I think ours may be even smaller than that.
Dante isn’t very good with timing his poles, and neither am I, so it was a learning progress. We finished a little late so I had no time to do no stirrup work, which is good and bad. Good because my legs were dead from keeping him going, bad because it’s No Stirrup November and 1) I feel bad if I don't do it 2) I need to practice that and 3) I need more leg muscle for jumping.
