I rode on Monday, but have no photographic evidence of this and I basically just rode Djion bareback around the small arena a bunch. The only interesting moment was when a car screeched to a halt while laying on the horn right by the arena. It sounded like the car hit something, but when my husband walked down the driveway to look, he couldn't find anything. My guess is a biker was involved somehow. The road is really popular with bikers but has no bike lane and there are a lot of accidents including fatal ones. We could smell the burning rubber, so whatever happened required a crazy amount of braking. Dijon was good though. He tensed up at all the noise, but just stopped when I asked and didn't lose his mind over it.
Dijon can't be ridden in a lesson (technically I could do a walking lesson, but I have better things to spend money on than that), so I just watched my husband's lesson on Tuesday morning. They were working on a cloverleaf pattern starting over poles and then raised to little jumps. The goal is to get Shasta listening and slowing down so the jumps were low.
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| Starting off trotting |
She was a bit stiff in the stifle starting off, especially to the right. She worked out of the stiffness, but persisted in not wanting to canter on the right lead. And this horse knows her leads, so she only does this when she's hurting. The vet is out again next week for dentals and will do a follow-up on the stifle and other wounds.
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| Cantering poles |
When they started doing cantering there was a lot of transition work between canter or trot to get Shasta focused and keep her from racing.
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| Still sporting silver spray on her wounds |
One of the downsides to little jumps is that Shasta doesn't consider them worth really trying for. She still gets excited and tries to race, but she doesn't need to and doesn't bother doing anything other than flat-lining over the jumps and not exhibiting any form.
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| Jump is too low to bother with knees |
She did occasionally bother to pick her knees up, but she wasn't really bothering to use her back or curl up. She's still a pretty pony though.
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| Slightly better form |
My husband needs to work on this exercise before his next lesson. It's a good exercise for him as well as he needs to figure out how to actually use his outside rein going around turns and keep Shasta in canter around smaller circles.
Here's the exercise for anyone not familiar with it:
Labels: Horseback Riding Lesson, Shasta
