Lesson Recap: Consistency is Key

Last Saturday, I was up and at 'em bright and early for my lesson! DH decided to accompany me, so plenty of media, hooray! 

Ruby being the best girl, as she does. 

I know I'm a broken record but I love love LOVE being able to ride with new trainer (almost) every week, I can just give her a quick high level overview of what's happened between lessons and then we jump right in! I continue to be baffled by how much better Ruby goes in the lessons (unless it's really just that I ride that much better when she's watching me? I DON'T KNOW). Our previous lesson homework had been to keep chipping away at our right bend consistency issues, and I didn't feel like I had made that much progress, and then in this lesson Ruby was like "bend right? okay yes ma'am!" -- it still needs work and definitely isn't as consistently reliable as tracking left, but it was worlds better than the work I felt like we were doing at home. 

Still have a long way to go towards making her as supple in the right rein as she is in the left rein, but that's 100% a ME problem since both my horses are that way. We've discussed the narcissistic left hand on the blog ad nauseum, but in this lesson new trainer also identified that my left elbow wants to lock and pull instead of being elastic. Add another thing to the neverending mental list I go through when my horse isn't going well and I know I'm doing something wrong :)

DH also got quite a bit of video footage and WOW she is getting so consistently good tracking left <3

Right lead canter is very nice once I can get her into it and remind Ruby that we stay supple on both reins throughout, lol. 

These were in the far corner and so dark I initially thought they weren't salvageable - I was able to lighten them up enough to see but it blew out pretty much all the color. Ah well. 

This one looks really vintage lol

He also got some useful video clips, both on his phone and from the DLSR, so I'll toss a few of those down below (although half the time it seems like they don't show up on the actual blog but they show up in feedly? Idk I don't have the energy to fuck with blogger any more this week lol). 

New trainer and I talked again about the schooling show at the end of the month (and another one more local to new trainer in mid-November) -- we ran through several of the pieces from 1-1 and 1-2 in the lesson, and I think they're all doable, so I think I'm gonna bite the bullet and just do it. What's the worst that can happen? (don't tell me, I've already imagined it in excruciating detail lol). I am a little bummed I probably won't get to take another lesson before the show - this weekend I'll be in Indiana hanging out with Jen, the weekend after that new trainer will be gone, and the weekend after that is the show -- unless I can make it up there one evening after work? If I had everything prepped so all I had to do was run home, change clothes, and throw Ruby in the trailer, I could possibly make it work. We'll see!