(Still) Learning To Let Go

What do you do when your trainer is sick with a 102* fever and lessons are cancelled for the week?

Take an obscene number of pictures of course.

This is his "I gave you one clean lead change today, now leave me alone" face.

Yeah, Coach S was bed ridden all of last week. Usually when lessons are cancelled, we just get to do a make-up lesson before the end of the semester, but we had an upcoming show, so she gave us the option to do a practice ride. One of the girls in my lesson has been on edge about Regionals and wanted to ride, so three of our usual seven person lesson ended up going.

Gonna be honest, I did two practice rides last semester, but both were cut short. During the first one, my horse was at the back of a big ass field and proceeded to charge me when I went to get her. During the second one, we spent approximately 30 minutes reminiscing with Coach S about her wild life story. Needless to say, it's been a while since I've had to get on a horse sans trainer and just figure out what to do. I'm not used to making a plan anymore.

Peep Lilly's booty in the background

I decided while tacking up to just go back to what I used to do in high school. Start every ride with two point, spend a lot of time trotting and make sure I'm doing each side evenly, switch directions a lot, then break and make something up for the rest of the ride. That plan lasted for only the two point part, and I cannot two point nearly as long as I used to. The rest of the ride was spent doing lots of serpentines and transitions, especially canter departs. I personally need to work more on transitioning from trot to canter and back, which is shocking considering the amount of time I spent on Dressage.

Maybe she's still bitter about having to wear this saddle pad . . .

We also swapped horses, and I took the chance to get back on Lilly despite the fact that she - oh, how do I say this - scares the living shit out of me. I don't know her exact height, but I'm pretty sure she's a medium pony. The little bugger is fast, and that's an accepted fact at my barn. I got on, we started going, she started going fast, she started going very fast. The accepted method with her is to hold when that happens, but I decided to see what would happen if I had 0 contact instead. My arena companions were fairly warned. I gave it a shot, and while she wasn't perfectly settled, it was a much nicer canter than before. Truthfully, she actually cantered instead of galloping. Did another circle of canter with no stirrups and moderate contact, which was successful.

Quit on that note cause it was a great one.