Lesson Recap: More Friends, More Fun!

I guess I'm never going to get around to recapping the lesson two weeks ago, but since I didn't get any media, it's not like it would be a terribly interesting recap anyway. But I don't want to get too far behind, so I'm going to try to catch up from last weekend! A local(ish) friend from my GMO takes lessons right down the road around the same time as I do, and actually two weeks ago I stopped by her lesson on my way home and snapped some pics for her. It was super cool to get a chance to watch her lesson, because her coach is very well versed in biomechanics, so the teaching style was very different than what I'm used to while simultaneously framing some of the things I'm working on in a totally different way. Local friend had also asked about stopping by where I lesson to watch my lessons, so after clearing that with my new instructor (jesus I need an abbreviation for that at some point I guess) we managed to make it happen last weekend! Do you know what that means? ALL THE MEDIA. 

Leg yields are coming along I guess lol. 

Not only did my friend cheerfully pick up the camera and snap photos throughout the whole lesson (getting some GEMS, let me tell you! I posted way too many on FB and I'm not even sorry about it lol), but I also brought my Pivo thinking maybe I could start getting video footage even on days I don't have someone to take pictures, and she kept an eye on that and moved it around to make sure it tracked me through probably 80%+ of the lesson. Media overload!!

But can we talk about this ROOTD? IT KILLED. 

Mostly the lesson was chipping away at the same old things we have been working on - making sure I'm maintaining the connection equally in both reins, and not letting her take off and zoom away in the canter (which I am still only marginally successful at lol). This lesson we also finished by working on some stretchy trot, since we got (deservedly) dinged on that in all four of my tests at the schooling show. Ruby used to have a really killer stretchy trot, but then I broke it somehow and she started using it as an excuse to take off with me any time I let her have that length of rein. Not bolting, she'll still trot, it's just trotting at mach 10 with her nose in the dirt and I can't steer or influence it at all, which is... decidedly unhelpful in the show ring. 

Obviously still so much work to do to consistently fix it, but we made more progress in the 10 minutes at the end of the lesson that I've made on my own in the last year so like.... that's why we pay the professionals HAHA. 

I haven't had (and don't anticipate having, frankly) time to chop this down into more manageable bits, but here is 5 minutes of the lesson - occasionally I come too close to the Pivo in the corner and it loses me, but it picks me back up, so if you want to see a snapshot of just general lesson (not cherry picked photos haha), here you go! It's cool to compare to footage from some of our first lessons, the changes are astonishing to me. 

Still totally in awe every day (and particularly when I see photos/watch video that this mare is mine guys!

Blogger is doing things backwards again, this was us leaving the morning of the lesson. I love her new halter fleece. Be your own secret santa, drink and Amazon Prime ;) 

It'll be a bit quiet on the lesson front through the end of the year - we have a lot of family/holiday events each weekend between now and January, so I gave my instructor a heads up I would probably fall off the face of the map for a minute, but we'll be ready to pick things back up in January. I also talked to her about bringing Cinna out - we've had a few bad rides in a row where we just sort of negatively fall into the same old stupid patterns and I can recognize this but I can't figure out how to STOP doing it, so we're gonna set up some relationship counseling (aka let the professional watch me and identify how I'm fucking things up and how to fix it lol).