Lesson Recap: The Canter's Back!

So I managed to carve out a chunk of time to write about the lesson LAST WEEKEND before I have another one THIS WEEKEND or I’ll never stay caught up lol. Oh well. I don’t have any time to write because I’ve been doing SO MANY THINGS which is also great, just… you know. Bad for blogging. C’est la vie! You saw the handful of screenshots I managed to grab in Wednesday's post so all the rest of the media will be unrelated. Sorry. You get what you get, lol. 

Enjoy a red Penny bagel

So, back to the lesson. I was excited, because I’d had several REALLY productive rides on Ruby in the week leading up to it, when I switched back to her old saddle. I also had a friend coming along to hang out and grab media (LOVE!). The weather was warm enough that morning to hose most of the disgusting clay mud off her (YAY FOR NOT LOOKING SO FERAL). Basically it was a trifecta of awesome, and the good lesson was just icing on the cake. 

She sleeps SO HARD. It's adorbs. 

My friend arrived in plenty of time to not make my departure late (and after DH/my mom making me late two lessons in a row, BLESS HER), we arrived early enough to make my OCD heart happy, the weather was gorgeous, and I was on and warmed up well before my lesson started. When TrainerB asked me how Ruby had been on our rides in between (which, she already knew some of it because we’d been texting), I asked Ruby to pick up a trot and then pretty effortlessly stepped into a nice, controllable canter, did half a circle, and brought her back down while we both laughed. So… yeah. Great way to start! At the end of the previous lesson I had been like “fuck no we’re not showing like this” and then we started this lesson like that so I said “welllllll maybe the show isn’t off the table?” and we immediately got to work on the elements I’d need for our recognized show debut… gulp!

DH's retired coworker still makes him the MOST AMAZING cakes for his birthday every year. I have been stuffing my face every night, I literally don't want to know what I weigh lol. 

The leg yields are generally recognizable (although varying degrees of good lol) but I did manage a small epiphany in this lesson about keeping both legs on – I had been so focused on whichever leg was asking her to move over that I frequently felt like I had to take the other leg entirely off to give her somewhere to go (which I know, makes no sense, but my brain doesn’t always make sense). Actually keeping both legs on helped her stay so much more connected and fluid through the entire leg yield instead of sort of running out of steam midway through – duh!

She went to town with us the other day and just sort of sunned herself on the seat the whole drive, lol. She's such a good little traveller!

The upward transitions into the canter were effortless again, but holy shit were the downwards back into trot…. NOT… haha. They were very “splat” and Ruby would try to yank the reins out of my hands to stretch down. Like yes I want you to stretch but you don’t get to decide when and where we’re doing it girlfriend, I do. Which led us into working on the stretchy trot again, which we haven’t touched since that really great lesson last December. 

The monstera in the guest room is getting a wee bit out of control and I need to cut it up and give some away lol. 

It was a lot to work on, and with temps in the 70s we were both dripping in sweat by the end of the lesson, lol. But I felt really good about it, and I asked TrainerB what her feelings were on the show – her response was print the entries! We talked for a bit about the entries (since I need to request stabling with her group), and several of the other barn ladies were hanging out and were all very excited for us to join them, which was a nice feeling! So after much obsessing and hemming and hawing all week, I printed them and got them filled out (hopefully correctly) and sent off Wednesday, so we are officially entered for our first recognized show in a few weeks! Cue lots of anxiety fueled meltdowns between now and then hahaha.