Hard Work! After shenanigans

This morning I got everyone turned out and deblanketed and they were munching hay. I was cleaning up a bit and found Lyrics' RRP graduate ribbon, that I never took a photo of with her wearing, so... I went to go do that. She let me catch her but was immediately suspicious. However, she posed nicely for her photos. Then when I released her she took off.. I guess she was worried I'd change my mind and ride her. She went flying off anf of course that set Dan and Funny off too. They were all running and Fleck was just hanging out watching the ridiculousness. I was cracking up because as she was running, she was whinnying to the others. It was so cute!

So anyways... later that afternoon I had a lesson with a new girl. Samantha. She came to me and taught me on both ponies. I liked her. I opted to ride Lyric first and had her tacked up and was walking in the arena doing my warm up when she got there. We talked briefly about things and then we went to work. Basically, she zeroed right in on our issues and reminded me to stay with it and fix it. She told me to "read the book and then do what it says". In other words... classical dressage riding is pretty simple. Stick with it, even if I'm not immediately getting the results I want. I need to teach her the correct aids and then let her figure it out. I shouldn't "test ride" and cover up for her. I shouldn't think "this isn't working, lets' try something different'. Just.. .keep at it and she will get it. And then I won't have to go back and fix the holes. But man, it's hard to actually do sometimes. Especailly when it's all going to heck! 

We started tracking right and we worked on a large circle. She had me "lengthen" her stride on one quarter of the circle, every time we came around that way. At first, she got squirrely, but as I learned to refine my aids and quiet them (because she is sensitive so no need to yell) she got softer and quieter. This helped her to engage her back and lift and engage her inside hind. We had some really nice moments and a lot of really icky and inverted and braced moments. But she's a smart girl and we started to get more nice moments as she settled into the routine. So then we went to the left. Oh dear. This is where it really fell apart! She was extra crooked today and felt like she was going to fly to the right if I didn't hold onto that inside/left rein. Samantha had to keep telling me.. drop the inside rein. Drop the inside rein. Drop it again. Let it be ugly. Let her figure it out. Every time I could, drop the inside rein and pet her neck. And it was definitely more awful than good. She really did not want to bend around my inside leg. And to be fair to myself, I was focusing so hard on trying to hear Samantha and do what she said that I sort of forget to ride. Which maybe isn't a bad thing, because had I been able to try to "correct" it, I may have inadvertently helped her too much and not made the aids clear to her. If that makes sense? I would have done "test riding" and made it look better, but wouldn't have truly taught her to go into the outside rein. BUT... maybe not. Maybe had I been able to focus on turning my shoulders more to the inside and posting more to the inside, I could have influenced her body more correctly? So I don't know... I'll have to ponder that. We did a little bit of canter with the same thought process behind it and then we called it quits. 

She told me to start with the easy side but only do a few passes to make sure she understood the assignment and then go to the hard side so that we weren't doing the hard side when she was tired. Then, quit before we hit fatigue. She said if I felt like I had two more good goes in her, then quit. But, to also strengthen her by working at it and building. Then go to the good side again. 

So... it wasn't a pretty lesson and it was a little embarassing and frustrating, but... I liked the fact that she held me accountable and I know it will be good for us in the long run. And Lyric seemed happy enough. :)

I did have some friends watch to see if they liked Samantha too and they were kind enough to record some video for me.