Lesson Recap: Hamsters Back on the Wheel

After our disastrous lesson two weeks ago, I didn't have super high hopes for the one I had scheduled this past Sunday, as the weather continued to make riding impossible (my arena was a solid sheet of ice). But, we aren't going to get any better sitting at home skipping lessons just because the weather sucks, so off we went :) I tweaked the pad configuration under the new saddle to see if maybe that helped, and we definitely had much more controllable canter departs, so that was a big plus! I did watch the videos DH/my mom took, and grabbed a few screenshots, but I'm too impatient to do much else with them (I find still photos so much easier!). You already saw some of them in the Equisense app with the data laid over them, but here are just some I screenshot watching the videos on the drive home. 

We didn't really work on anything new or exciting in this lesson, it was mostly just a valiant effort not to backslide and lose the progress we made last fall. New trainer (okay its been SEVEN months she's not new, let's call her TrainerB) commented that Ruby was much more willing to "play" this lesson (aka a little less nuts lol). She also thought that switching her back to the Verbindend (instead of the nathe Ruby was going in for most of November/December) was a good call, as Ruby was less inclined to just yahoo through it. I tossed a few of the shorter video clips (since let's be real, watching 4 minutes of my lessons is like watching paint dry and none of ya'll have time for that lol) down below - I didn't edit them or cherry pick anything, that's just an accurate representation of what our lessons look like with so little saddle time in between right now, sigh. 

I am constantly reminding myself that January/February are usually the worst months to try to keep a horse in work with only an outdoor in Missouri, and that the progress will come back faster than I realize once we can ride regularly again. Plus I have my week of dressage boot camp thanks to the Dressage Foundation to look forward to, once I can get that scheduled! The first show on TrainerB's calendar is the first weekend in April, and unless a miracle happens, it doesn't look like we'll be ready for that one (since I have no inclination to set $800 on fire and get bad scores just to say I went to a show), but there will be other shows :) so in the meantime... we'll just keep on keepin' on, and dream of drier weather!