I had originally planned to take Hoss for a long ride on the 14th, but between him having had such a scary fall the day before, and me being unbelievably tired, I gave it up as a bad job and had lunch with my daughter instead. One reason for having a trail ride on Tuesday was to make sure Hoss had his brain together for a lesson on Wednesday.
Despite skipping the ride the day before a lesson, Hoss did really well. We worked on the next step toward our other goal: Dressage. Beth has a lot to fix on me. It doesn't help that I'm not consistent about lessons. I really need to commit to taking two lessons a month at least. So today, Beth worked with me on getting my legs moving properly. My problem has been a swinging right leg. Makes it way harder to control the horse if I can't control my leg! So she's been building up the steps to get me to where I have better control.
The arena is not my favorite place. I've had a bit of "arena-phobia" for as long as I can remember. I think it dates back to horse camp when I was a kid. I can't point to any one incidence, but I've had an aversion to the arena ever since. It's bizarre. My horse can run away with me full tilt on the craziest trail and I just ride it out, but the same thing happens in an arena and I just go to pieces. I must say I'm getting better. In my last lesson I had a total freak out about the whole thing because I couldn't "let go" enough to relax into the canter. This lesson was much easier, and I felt much more comfortable in the arena.
The problem I had in this lesson is that I am just far too literal minded. When Beth gave me an instruction on leg movement while I was trotting, I thought it only applied to the trot. This is how literal I am. If she'd said, "Do this in all gaits," I would've gotten it immediately. As it was, I was getting frustrated because I felt like she was being unclear. Beth then said, "You have to do it at the walk, too." Okay, fine. Applies to the walk, too. Again the literal-mindedness comes into play, and it doesn't even occur to me that it would apply in the canter, too! By the time we got to the canter, I was frustrated and getting a little spun about it. So my freak-out in this lesson was over that.
Once we got the freak-out out of the way, we were able to continue on with the lesson. By now I was working on canter transitions. At this point, I was into it. I wanted to get it down and know what I was supposed to be working on. Hoss, on the other hand, was getting annoyed by the whole arena thing. It's not the arena specifically he doesn't like. I think he just hates doing something over and over again when he already knows it! By the time we got to the canter, he was in full-on "I'm going to do everything I can to ignore/disobey you" mode. It didn't help that one of the things Beth was having me work on was correcting him strictly with my legs and seat. Well, Hoss isn't stupid. He figured out I was supposed to touch his face. He started pretending I wasn't doing anything! I did correct him a couple of times by backing him, which made a huge difference. This is how I know he was just being annoyed and didn't want to play anymore. We got a few good canter transitions. Beth asked if I wanted to keep going or stop at that point. I chose to stop, not because I didn't really want to keep going and try to do better, but because I felt Hoss was over it. If I'd thought we could keep going and not have him get worse, I would have.
So now I have this lesson to work on. This should be an adventure.
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