My Secret Garden: A Pony Tale: Lesson recap

Quick lesson update, since the day is quickly waning. Saturday I made a quick trip to the barn while the boy was at work and his oldest was sleeping to get in a lesson before the rain hit. I got ready and walked around the fields while Ginny finished up her lesson on Riley.

We worked on evenness in the reins. This is an issue I have and that the pony bids me into. I have to remember that that can be only accomplished through using both hands at the same time. Specifically, I have to hold the inside longer and then add the outside rein at the same time.

Now that Violet is past being a green horse, I have to concentrate on no longer leading with the inside rein. To do this, hold the inside rein above the withers towards, but not crossing, the next. I don't seem to have an issue with this when the inside rein is the right. But when it's the left, I have a problem for some reason. Maybe because she bulges that outside right shoulder and overbends her neck to the inside without actually bending through her body? I don't know, but I have more problems with the left.

We also worked a bit on stopping to take a break. If we get stuck on something because of something I'm doing wrong or something V is doing wrong, I need to stop so we can both take deep breath and start over, rather than continuing the fight, which I will not win.

We use the haunches in to set up for the canter. We did some at the walk, and then moved to the trot, but when it comes to using it to set up for the canter, it's more the thought of it that we need, in order to keep the horse up in front and for the rider to keep hands raised with no dropping and pulling against. It's not that we need a big haunches-in step, just that we set up for it and then go to canter. We had some really nice canter work, even with the unevenness of the field. There were definite grins happening while I was cantering around, which is not something that always happens.