Riding Lesson Time

Yesterday was one of my riding lesson days. This is a traveling lesson. I go to the student's home and coach her on horsemanship skills. Since she had just competed in the Playday the Saturday before, we started the lesson going over her and her mare's performance. Of course, she could not think of anything that hadn't been done perfectly and the judge had no suggestions for improvement ( After all she had won every class.). I did remember a few things that needed tweaking - transitions, body alignment, rein handling, precision. Then it was time to start riding. We began with a walk/trot drill over poles. Layout: 3 walk poles (2 ft apart), right turn to a single pole where the trot transition is, continue on to 3 trot poles (3.6 ft apart), right turn to a single pole where the walk transition is, and then back to the walk poles. Benefits: helps establish horse's cadence, develops precision in cues, transitions become smoother. We worked on this for 20 minutes both directions. Then moved the pattern out to establish a trot/lope drill. Same basic pattern. Now last week, the girl had a terrible time with her lope transition. Her horse would just ignore her or finally pick up the lope after much urging. Today with this drill pattern, the horse picked up the lope beautifully. The girl and her mom were amazed. I explained that cueing the transition over a pole makes it easier for the horse to make the transition because since the horse is already lifting her shoulders to go over the pole, the lope transition just naturally rolls. Now that pattern was anything but pretty, but the girl was able to practice her cueing, the mare lightened up on her forehand and the pair really worked as a team. We ran the drill several times ( I had to make her quit, the mare was really starting to blow). While she walked the horse I then set up the poles in a circle. I explained that the goal of this drill was to trot through the poles maintaing the arc of the circle. The girl laughed saying "That will be easy." She soon found out that it was harder than she thought. She and the mare ran over the guide cones repeatedly, nicked the poles and wound up going in a diagonal straight line through the pattern. It was a real eye opener. I explained that the reason it was so hard for her is that when she approaches a pole pattern, she just lets the mare pull her through. The mare prefers straight (like most horses) . She needed to maintain control through the entire drill - keep the mare moving forward, between her legs and reins and stay with the motion. Once she understood, she tried the drill several more times. She finished a little better, but these are concepts that might take a bit to sink in. We wrapped up with a recap and question time. Her attention span had been vastly depleated so I sent her off to cool out her horse and untack. At the show last Saturday, since she had won every class she entered she was feeling a little cocky. I gave her some things to think about. Now maybe she will buckle down and get ready for the District horse show in a month.