So it's been over a week since I last rode Kieran and I had a lesson today (we didn't have one last weekend, long story).
I was going into it this morning thinking, "hmm...maybe we could just go on a trail ride? Maybe I should call Jessica and tell her I think I'm getting sick and not to bother coming over?
You get the idea.
But I didn't do any of that. And I'm glad I didn't! Even warming up, Kieran was really ready to go and listening and he gave me two gorgeous canter transitions and nice, collected, uphill canters.
Today's lesson involved a canter grid of poles set something like so:
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Sort of like a bounce, one stride, one stride, bounce. The idea being to get Kieran figuring out how to negotiation things that aren't set nice even distances apart.
We started with them just trotting through on the ground. Then cantering through on the ground. Then slowly raising a few up as if they were cavaletti.
Oh yeah, and we did some nice trotting spiraling circles during the warmup and also when Jessica was re-arranging poles as needed we'd do some trotting around encouraging him to stretch out and that was nice as well.
Anyway, by the end of the lesson, it looked more like this:
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Basically a cavaletti at the top with a "bounce" to a low (like...a foot) crossrail and then two strides to another cavaletti.
He'd had some trouble previously, either between me not getting my timing right, him being lazy, or some combination of the two.
The last time through it was just about perfect. Jessica said she could tell I saw my "spots" just right, that I pushed him forward or half-halted at just the right times, and Kieran cantered over everything without knocking anything. Seriously beautiful. (no pictures, hah!)
Anyway, I was grinning ear to ear and we ended the lesson on that note.
Obviously, a bit of a riding vacation agreed with him! :)
