Last Week's Lesson

Last week Satin and I had our second individual lesson. R started out by asking me if I took Satin to jump at a horse show next year, what would I do? My reply was, "Vomit". LOL What R meant was Jumpers, Hunters, etc. I had always thought the jumpers looked fun as I have a need for speed, but on the other hand until I am more confident Hunters may be a better fit. I expressed this to R, when my other response of "Whatever you told me to do" did not suffice. R agreed that the Hunters were a good basis for everything and that we would focus on that this lesson. She decided we would do some English Pleasure in our warm up since that is what I originally inquired about when starting these English lessons (though now I think Hunters or Jumpers are more my thing).

Satin hates to trot. She prefers either walk or canter, and gallop of course! The first thing we did was work on getting her to extend her stride a bit and go in a more forward trot, which we achieved with the help of a vine that served as a crop. One thing about Satin is that you never actually have to touch her with the crop (or in this case vine). All she has to do is see it and she gets the picture. After waving it by her eye a few times she was trotting right along. Her canter was pleasure perfect so that wasn't a problem.

Anyway, after that R reset the jumps to be more Satin's size and told me to go warm up a bit before she gave us our course. Well, Satin decided she was only jumping the jumps in the direction of the in gate, but not the opposite direction. We tried and tried for about ten minutes and then all of sudden she changed her mind and was ready pop right over everything in both directions. She is quite the silly little mare sometimes.

After we had managed to get over the jumps in both directions R gave us a short hunter course to do of an outside line with two bending lines. Satin went over everything very nicely and she gave us another slighty longer course adding another bending line, with much more bend then the other two. The old mare never ceases to amaze me though. She took all of the jumps beautifully, going at the perfect pace, like she had been a hunter all of her life. I managed to do pretty well too, if I do say so myself. R was very happy with us both. Maybe a hunter show is in our near future after all.