Lesson #54: Anniversary

October 4, 2013

It is literally 1 year to the day, when NR and I started riding at Greyden. A lot has happened since then and I feel like the best thing to do is to review how far I've come. We've got a new instructor tonight and since the lesson focused around what we know and what we can do, I thought it might be beneficial for me to review the things I've accomplished, to date, and to review goals and direction.

In order for this comprehensive list to be relevent, I"ve checked out the Equine Canada handbook of Rider Level Program, Levels 1-10 for the English Discipline. It appears this is a rudimentary manual for all English riders to aspire towards before deciding to specialize in a specific area of English riding. These areas could be anywhere from Dressage to Eventing to Jumping.

There are extensive requierments within the manual and at this point, I am comfortably past level 1 and nearly completed level 2. I have a few items to master in level 2:

• Know how often the ferrier should visit a horse (I'm sure I can find this information online somewheres...)
• Be able to tie a quick release knot (I tied one of these when I was a kid but I can't remember and we never need to do it in the school right now)
• Know the reasons for cleaning tack and the method involved (I would know this if I didn't miss 'spa day' back in May)
• Preparation and accuracy between the letters. Riders are not necessarily proficient at canter at this level (my canter is something I continue to struggle with)
• Riding 20m circles of the correct size (i.e. going to tangent points) (I ride some sort of circle... but 20m exactly? I'm not sure)

There are some items in level 3 which I have familiarity with but there still is a lot that I haven't gotten through yet. But, for 1 year of weekly riding, this isn't too bad!

In terms of my lesson today... I need to work on the canter with Trinket because I have a tendency to be heavy on her forehand which only makes matters worse. My shoulders collapse and I lean forward to initiate the canter which is exactly what you don't want to be doing. With this mare, doing that makes it difficult for her to initiate the canter since she tends to be heavy on the forehand anyways; all that is accomplished is that she speeds up in the trot and I just bump around uncomfortably!