Lesson #52: More Bending

This was the worst traffic experience to date. So much so that we didn't arrive until 8pm--which is when our lesson starts and so we had to request the horses to be tacked-up upon arrival. I don't prefer that because of the fact that if I'm riding a horse I'm not familiar with, I prefer to get to know them better during the grooming and tacking up. Like today... I'm assigned to ride Lakota. He's a relatively new horse and hasn't been in any other classes prior.

I have been looking forward to this ride all week because I was sick the week before and wasn't able to make it out and with work... well, this was a welcome change! Today we work on 3-loop serpentines which takes the lot of us 2 tries to understand what is being asked of us. When we finally understood it, we were asked to focus on the bend of the horse so that they were turning ever so slightly on the bends and the straight aways were to be straight. Tougher than it sounds, trust me. While we did some cantering, the feature of the lesson was perhaps the turning refinement. The serpentines and 20m circles were our features as they are tricky to do well because you're asked to create bend, maintain a consistent pace and also to keep straight when you're supposed to and bend when you're supposed to, too.

We are reminded not to pull too much when asking for a bend or you just end up turning their heads in the direction you want without their bodies actually moving in that direction too. It's all very technical but I'm not at the point where I can explain that so I'm not going to try :P

Otherwise, not so much a big post lesson but one which certainly challenged us with understanding our bends.