Lucy and Hopi's Lesson

Hopi is six and hasn't been under saddle very long, so I haven't had the chance to mess him up yet ;-). He has been with us about four and half months but I haven't had much opportunity to get him out: a combination of sloppy winter trails and busy doing endurance with Roo. He's pretty steady under saddle, but still very leery of people he doesn't know very well on the ground, so it's really good to get him out and used to dealing with strangers.

This was his fourth lesson and he's doing excellently and I'm so pleased with him. If I give him the right signals, he responds in kind. When I start to loose it, he also disintegrates - which is perfect feedback for me to help me get it right.

Our instructor has been building my skills over the last few months (starting with Roo) and I'm starting to get it. I guess she's what you'd call a centered riding teacher of sorts - she teaches a system of very subtle weight changes and relaxing of certain muscles and opening joints that aren't used to opening that way, etc, so it takes a while for your body to figure out what its supposed to be doing.

I work at a computer hours and hours almost every day, so as a result tend to collapse to the left (right arm up on the table operating the mouse), so have to work constantly on opening my left rib cage. My left leg is also much weaker (and stupider) than my right, so right circles are much easier than left ones for my body. I never realised how crooked I was until I started these lessons, which was a bit demoralizing.

This video shows 10 minutes from an hour lesson.

Notice how we are suffering from abysmal February weather here in Northern California (not).

Thanks to Ann for taking the footage with her new camera.

(please ignore the heckling audience - they are good friends, honest :-) )

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• horse
• lesson
• dressage
• endurance
• centered-riding