Indya likes to /move/!

First off, I went up to Gentle Giants last Thursday to help with preparations for the flea market that was on the 20th. I ended up planting mums. :) Didn't actually get around to riding, but that's okay.

The weekend, I flew home for my (and my grandfather's) birthday. Had fun. Requested my family just give me money or donate to GG so I came back with a nice lump of cash to present to Christine when I head up there later this week. Yay!

Flew back yesterday morning and ended up spending the afternoon down in Annapolis. I haven't really gone down there just to hang out in a while (with my dog!) so it was fun to do that. Took a bit of a catnap on a bench on the Naval Academy. Hee!

Last night was back to riding lessons. I rode a schoolhorse named Indya. We discovered that working up to the group canter gets her antsy (she starts anticipating). By working up I mean we all lined up at one end of the arena, the first person would start trotting, then in the corner ask for the canter and canter around, coming back to the trot at the end of line. And so on, with each of us departing with less time between until we were actually all cantering at the same time. Indya, however, would get herself worked up waiting in line until, when it was time to go, she'd go fast. It felt like we'd do four canter strides and already be down to the other end of the arena. Eesh.

I ended up having to sort of walk her around the middle of the ring on a loose rein in between turns to help keep her relaxed and not thinking about heading off to canter. We did finally get to the group canter. For a few seconds.

Then one of the other horses dropped her head, dropped her shoulder, and gave a little buck. Just enough that her rider came off, landing on her back with a pretty resounding thud. Luckily, she wasn't injured. This was the same rider on the same horse that came off last week so Kristy has pretty much decreed they won't be paired together for the forseeable future. I don't know what's up with Comet to make her do that. I hope it isn't the start of a pattern because that'd make her pretty much unable to continue being a school horse, if they can't trust her.

Anyway, we spent the last few minutes of the lesson after that working on the sitting trot and even the rider who came off got back up and worked at that.

Indya, for the record, was lovely at the sitting trot, once I got her going again. See, it was near the end of the lesson, we'd been stopped (because of the fall) for several minutes, and somewhere in there during the lesson I'd dropped my crop (accidentally, but I didn't need it anyway). She thought it was over. I had a hell of a time convincing her to pick it up again but once I did, we were fine.

Won't get to do any more riding, likely, until Thursday at the earliest, so we'll see how things go. Can't wait to find out how the flea market went. :)