Cob Jockey

For a long time, Connor was not a horse that could be used in lessons.  He was weird, quirky, and, as my trainer said once several years ago, "Connor never forgets."  It was easy to upset his learning apple cart, so to speak.

The sunset was stunning last night!  I had to be at the barn slightly later than usual to kill a wasp nest in my trailer, sigh.

But within the last couple of years, I've started thinking that he'd probably be a good advanced lesson horse.  He's not a GP schoolmaster, but he's solid through First, and he's a very subtle ride despite my best efforts to fail him on that.  He's also way less...weird...than he used to be.

So I was thrilled when my trainer's assistant had a lesson on him this week that went really well.  She's a solid rider but newer to Dressage, and she has a green horse herself, so Connor was a lot different than what she's used to riding.

And also very strange.  No filter.

She gushed about:

- How good of a teacher he was:  "He doesn't give anything away.  If I did everything right, he did it for me, but if I didn't, he didn't."

- How subtle you have to be with your aids while riding him: "There was one moment where I was thinking about preparing for a canter to trot transition, and I didn't feel like I changed anything but I must have, because he went ahead and did the transition."  (I can guarantee that's not anticipation for this horse, that's probably something like she changed the position of her torso very slightly, and he noticed and she didn't.)

- All the fun things she got to do with him that her horse can't do yet.

Part of me is thrilled that someone was able to get that much out of my "one person horse", and part of me is INSANELY jealous but also happy for her that there's a horse in the barn that can fulfill the schoolmaster role for her right now.  Can someone move into my barn with a GP horse?  Please and thank you. 😁