Breaks are good things, apparently

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! :)

Riding today

Just riding around with some cavaletti and poles. :)



No, not with the new saddle, it hasn't gotten here yet.

Kieran was AMAZING tonight

And I wish I'd gotten video of it. I set the camera up but must have accidentally hit the record button again (thus, turning OFF recording) when I set it down on the post. So no video, alas!

Anyway, I set up a few trot poles in one corner so he had to trot over them around a turn, then one cavaletti with ground lines on each side (so we could jump it from either direction) on the quarterline, and another one set up the same way more or less on the M->K diagonal.

We warmed up and first just did a lot of trotting around, not doing endless riding on the rail but changing up directions and weaving around the cavaletti and going over the trot poles. I was pleasantly surprised to see how forward he was today (especially considering how extra-relaxed he was beforehand! That usually means he's going to be kind of lazy).

Then we started trotting over the cavaletti from either direction and instead of just trotting down the line and stopping, we'd trot over one, go down, turn and go up the diagonal for the other one (or go down the diagonal, turn, and go up the quarterline). He picked that up pretty quickly so then we threw in cantering.

First, I just asked him to canter over one, then canter around the ring on the rail. He started out kind of rushy, but once he got into the groove, it was better. Then we were able to canter down the quarterline and make the turn for the diagonal and go over both cavaletti (like a very tiny jump course, LOL) and vice versa. So we were able to do those from either direction a few times and he was doing really well at actually hopping over instead of just doing a big canter stride over them so once we did that, I called it quits and cooled him out.

I'm so very pleased with him today, you've got no idea.

I do really need to find an instructor down here to come out and teach us, though. I don't want to add anything too much more complicated without some help and I know I'm still getting in his way more than I should (I really get the sense of, "mom, if you'd just get out of the way...I've GOT this, okay?" from him). So if you're reading this and now any good instructors in the Augusta area who'll come out to where you are to teach, let me know who to contact! :)

Also got to meet one of the other boarders today as they pulled in as I was getting done riding. Unfortunately, she'd had to take her horse over to UGA to get surgery done on his eyes (something about cancerous cells?) so...not really a happy occasion but it was still nice to meet more people at the barn since I'm usually out there alone.

Oh! And there will likely be trail riding this weekend! So. Excited! :)