I almost missed my lesson tonight, I had rushed around so much after school to get all three horses done, and I still wasn't ready in time! I had to basically chisel the mud off Shadow because she'd clearly being doing hippo impressions in the school. Finally I managed to get tacked up and on, but then found that all the schools were full, so I had to walk round the yard as a warm up - I was freezing! Soon enough, Ruth had finished with the girl before me and it as my turn to begin. We started off working at just trying to get Shadow to not spook off in every direction possible, (she'd been kept in for the past three days and had only had an hour out, so was a bit fresh). It was very difficult to keep her calm and consentrate on Ruth at the same time.
Ruth had me work on the quality of the trot and keeping her forward in front of my leg in a good rythmn so that she didn't rush towards the get and back off my leg down the far side of the school looking to spook. We then did some very small 15 meter circles, and the canter was difficult again, because Shadow constantly jerked her head and chomped her teeth, trying to pull me out of the saddle. In other words, Shadow was a little bit grumpy!
As i came out of the school, I felt like I had done the worst riding of my life, it felt so ugly and horrible! But right away mum told me that it was some of the best riding I had ever done, and explained that often when you feel it went terrible, it is almost always far far better than you think, (unless your feeling was right and it really was bad of course!). All in all a really good lesson, I got some excellent work out of Shadow and learned to work her through being fresh and spooky, and I couldn't stop grinning when mum told me how well I'd done.
Thank you to Stonehouse Solutions for sponsoring my lessons!
A big thank you too Ruth Baxter for taking the time to teach me, and would be happy to reccomend Ruth to anyone!! Xoxo, showjumperchick