Cob Jockey

Team practice was SO MUCH FUN!  If you ever want a synopsis of why I love boarding, this is it.

It's the one guy on the team running into the aisle and asking if she wanted us in English tack today (he meant Dressage, but I asked him how his barrel pattern was coming along anyway.)

It's sort of getting to audit five other peoples' lessons.

It's having a coach, and a common goal with all the people you hang out with (kickass somewhere between BN and Training level eventing this year).

A wordy post broken up with pictures of Connor loafing in his field, because nobody was there to take pictures.

It rode like all of our private lessons, but with friends.  We started out by working on straight walk-halt transitions, and she told us we were all responsible for making sure our horse was on our aids and in front of our leg the entire lesson.  "Whatever you need to do to make that happen, fine, but it's your responsibility to identify it and fix it."  Autonomy, so cool!

Next we moved on to riding the first half of each long side in shoulder in, and the second half in haunches in. Sleeping on yesterday's lesson must have done Connor some good, because we got mad compliments for how smooth we made the transition between the two, and were told to quit that exercise early.

After that, canter transitions and then counter canter, long sides only.  Turns out it was the first time I've ever asked Connor for that, and we got the wrong (right?) lead the first time.  "Imagine you're in the open field and you're going to ask him to pick up the left lead."  I did, and he did!  "This is what it means to have your horses listening to your aids and not just anticipating and thinking 'Oh she's asking for the canter, she must want this lead,'" she said.  The counter canter really did something for him, and he was so straight and on my aids the rest of the lesson.


The second half of the 90 minute lesson was all poles and jumping, and I am proud to say that though Connor was tired, he gave it his all and did really well.  We need to work on jumping straight, and he was a little long and flat, but overall he was great through the exercise that eventually became four crossrail bounces in a row.  The strides were set for the average stride length of the group, and I felt like he didn't have to work too hard to reach it, though I did have to ride with awareness of it.

It sounds like we'll be doing this once a week on Sundays, and occasionally switching horses.  Since we all are required to have at least one private lesson a week already (she doesn't do group lessons), and it's hard to teach Dressage in a group lesson, this will often be a jump lesson, which is great since none of us jump on our own.  I am especially excited to switch horses, since nobody but Mary, my trainer and I have ridden Connor the entire two years he's been here, and I haven't ridden any other horses (besides the football shaped (and sized?) ponies Austen has put me on when I visit her) the entire time I've owned him.