The Balancing Act

Our ride today was up and down.  She didn't want to move forward and she could feel my hesitation to enforce it.  I was close to giving up and calling it a day, then Laura drove up and asked "How's it going?"  I said she was being a pill.  She just smiled at me.  I knew what that smile meant.  That smile meant "Ride that horse like you mean it."  That smile meant, "Stop walking and make her go forward."  That smile meant "I believe that you can do this and I don't need to help you."

And so I did.  By that time I had been half-assing my ride for the last hour so I was almost out of time.  But the end of our ride was fairly lovely and I was able to start looking at what I'm doing, instead of riding around cursing under my breath and hating myself and my pony.

Our turning is having some trouble.  She pops her outside shoulder and drifts through my outside rein.  To be fair, I have noticed that I hang too much on the inside rein, dragging her around corners in desperation.  My  outside rein is not consistent enough.  And when I try to push her shoulder over with my outside leg, she thinks I'm asking her to canter and pops her head up to canter.

I haven't spent my requisite two hours googling this problem, but rest assured I will have some internet ideas for our next ride.  I also really need to get a book of exercises and have a better game plan for when I get on.  Otherwise, I end up with a horse who's forward and not enough to do with her.  We still can't quite make it around the entire arena, so we're limited in our space.  But we are getting closer.  We actually rode V to P without a spook.  Progress, folks.  Progress.