Eeeeeksss!! Our first lesson! I'm not really sure we're ready for this, but here we are. :)
And she was so good! We had our lesson with Kelly Eaton at Ashland. I got there and she was good for grooming and tacking up. (And of course she loaded and hauled great). We walked on foot into the arenas because I wanted to do a hair of pillar work and let her look. She was a little on edge. We did some pillar walks and then she settled a bit. I got on. And about that time, Sandra and Eileen came out of the woods. So she had to stop and stare. Okay..that's acceptable. But then Luke and Allison were up in the jump arena and that was scary. And then they headed down through the woods. I had to yell out to Allison so she would talk and Funny could stop threatening to spin and bolt. Luckily about this time Kelly was finished with her last lesson and it was our turn.
She asked if we wanted to do the lower arena instead and I said yes. So we got down there and Kelly came and said hi and Funny chilled out a bit. We did a little walking but then picked up the trot to get her working. And we worked! She did the whole lesson, although she also got lots of long walk breaks. It was perfect. We started with trotting on a circle or around the arena and then once Kelly saw her go, she had me do some figure 8's. Then those turned into some 3 loop serpentines. Then she challendged us to do more loops. She told me to come back at the next lesson and tell her how many loops I fit in my arena. :) The changes of direction kept Funny paying attention and reiterated that she had to stay between the aids. It also helped balance her. The goal was to ignore the chomping and fussing in the bridle and just ride her two legs to two hands. Keep her between my aids. That meant I had to keep a steady but soft connection with even rein contact on both sides. I also had to make sure I was even with my legs. Kelly noticed that in some of the direction changes or when she finally accepted the contact, she would slow her pace a bit. So I had to keep the momentum.
We then switched to alternating tear drops, which was fun. Hard! But fun. She was especially obvious about slowing her tempo out of these turns so I had to ride a bit more forward. Kelly asked if I had ridden with a whip and I told her I was sort of afraid to. She went and got a pine straw branch for me. It was soft and floppy and had a fringe of pine straw on the end - like a toilet bowl brush. Funny didn't give it a second thought. In fact, it was pretty useless but it was so short and floppy. But even me waving it around didn't make Funny react. Kelly laughed and told me to maybe not do such a good job desensitizing my horses. I told her I really didn't though. She laughed and was like "yeah... you do". Okay.. I mean I guess they get to see A LOT OF STUFF...like me cantering Dan in a shower curtain. But I didn't expose her and desensitize her to flags and plastic bags... oh wait.. maybe I did. Well... oh well. Not much I can do about it now.
So we got some decent work and then Kelly was like "okay, maybe start on a circle in the middle of the arena and pick up the canter". Oh... okay, so we're doing that then? I did. Funny picked up a big quick canter and I over-reacted a little and immediately hauled on her face accidentally. Sorry baby girl! Sorry! We did a few circles both ways and Kelly reminded me to keep her foward. Forward will help the straight.
We quit with that. It was so nice to be able to do big girl things with her. :) And well worth the lesson.
After that we untacked and headed to the lake for a reward! We ran into Deb and Arwen so they came along with us. Funny was pretty good with Arwen, which was nice to know. (Another mare). They had a grand ol time in the lake. Funny must have rolled about 7 times. And then she started walking out to the deep end. She came SOOOOO close to swimming about 2 or 3 times. She thought about it too. She would stand there, thinking, then walk out... then get juuuuuuuust to the edge where she would no longer be touching, and contemplate.. and circle back in. But then she'd turn back and try it again and just not quite be brave enough. That's okay little girl... it's a lot harder with me on board too.
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