Lesson Recap: Picking Back Up

I had another lesson last weekend, and I'm thrilled to be getting back into the swing of things! I was lucky enough to have two friends offer to ride along, so there is MEDIA! Yay! I also set up my Pivo, but there was a persistent "wag" in the video, so didn't get much useful out of that. I got some tips from more reliable Pivo users on swapping back to a different app (where there must be multiple Pivo apps, I truly do not know), so hopefully at my lesson this weekend it's more useful. 

Ruby showed up all business to this lesson - decided she wasn't scared of the interior arena wall (probably helped there were no shenanigans in the cross ties during my lesson this week, lol), and she kept her llama-ing to a minimum, so we were actually able to just... work! Amazing :) love this horse and her brain. 

Nothing particularly earth-shattering in this lesson, just chipping away at the fitness and the relaxation - Ruby continues to think she knows better than I do what I want, so it was a matter of letting her make mistakes and then correcting them, until she chilled out enough to take more direction. The canter departs were noticeably better than they are at home (don't understand what's up with that, sigh), but she definitely offerent it way more than I asked for - overachiever! ha. We worked a bit on adding and removing power in the trot, and her being able to really get through without powering up and running away with me. 

The new arena is so well insulated that even without being heated, I quickly got too warm for my vest, lol. Annnnnd lessoning in a clingy sunshirt in the dead of winter will very quickly remind you how unkind the holidays were to your waistline and that you need to resume your diet/exercise plan ASAP... sigh. 

There's a schooling show at the end of the month that TrainerB is taking some clients to, but between fitness and finances I think we'll skip this one, but we're discussing another one at the end of February. And there are randomly twice as many recognized shows as usual at our "home" venue, so hopefully plenty of chances to get out there and give it the ol' college try! I told TrainerB my goal is to be able to do a credible First-Three by the end of the year, so we'll see if that happens, haha. Would also love to snag my other bronze score at First. My expectations are a bit more realistic this year than last year, lol. 

Hoping that in a few months the lesson recaps will be less about fitness and more about fun things ;)