Another Fabulous Lesson!

So just to give anybody reading this some background: I just moved barns back in October, so obviously that means I also started with a new trainer then and I absolutely LOVE her. I get so much out of every lesson and she gives us stuff to work on in between lessons. She is super prepared for every lesson and is very detailed and precise with her explanations which really helps. She shows us little things to do to fix things or get what we want that you would not think would make a big difference, but it makes a huge one. I take my lessons with my friend who rides her Standardbred english and does jumpers and hunters and what not, and she has us do a lot of excercises together that really help us even though we do different disciplines.

Anyway, I had a lesson today and it was great. My trainer rode a horse she is working with in the lesson with us, which was cool because we were able to see the things she wants us to do instead of just hear it, and we did some different excercises. We rode three across staying stirrup to stirrup, did some walk, trot, canter, halt excercises in a circle, etc. Then we did some jumping excercises as a group (yes I do jump my western pony). Satin's flat work was awesome. Her canter and jog were at the perfect speed and her headset is really improving. Her jumping was good too. We did some raised cavalettis and then a cross rail and small gate vertical. She bombed (overjumped) them a bit (as usual) in the beginning, but then she started doing them very nicely. My trainer said she had some of the nicest jumps she has seen out of her yet (and me as well :) ). Then we began on some grid work, just some cross rails and cavalettis at first. She was speed racer through that, especially as more cavalettis were turned into crossrails. She would zoom through the grid then gallop off and after that she was so hyper she was running through the single crossrail, so then we had to calm her down and she ended the jumping nicely. Then we did some work on our spins, starting with quarter turns and rollbacks then going into the full spins and Satin did great! Her spins are getting much tighter and more precise, especially her bad way. I'm so proud of my girl! We have our next show coming up on June 7th, so if we keep training like this it will be awesome. My trainer gave us some pre-show advice about what to focus / work on so I think we will be good to go. We may squeeze in another lesson next week before the show depending how our week goes, so we will see. I may decide to do another one even if she is doing awesome because it just makes me feel better to get some good work in with my trainer pre-show. She is so calming and relaxing, so she makes me feel more confident about my showing.

We are shooting for a trail ride tomorrow as long as the weather cooperates, so fingers crossed!