We had another lesson Wednesday morning. This one went much better as I put Nilla’s bit on and made her actually mind her manners. Our trainer asked us to actual ride today and man was it exhausting. She put a timer on and made us trot for 5 whole minutes. After that, we had to do two-point. Not for 5 minutes, but we had to do it for a few laps and then sometimes through the poles as we were doing pole exercises.
It was exhausting…
We did a line of trot poles that was then raised in a zig-zag pattern to really force them to pick up their feet. This worked really well for Shasta. Nilla mostly just barged through too quickly or too slow and tapped every pole, but she’s green and never done this before so I was giving her lots of praise and pats.
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| Fancy pony makes it look easy |
The trainer then put a cross rail up with two trot poles before and two canter poles after. My husband was working on actually jumping and cantering away after. Nilla and I were working on just trotting through it. After a few rounds, she actually started to pop over a little bit and even offered a few strides of canter after.
She has really not figured out how this whole thing works, but I give her major points for trying. After she bounced really high one time and I got left behind, I was really focusing on not hitting her in the mouth so my form is pretty terrible. I need to get a neck strap for next week. Because she’s so down hill, trying to grab mane really throws me up her neck.
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| Starting to canter |
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| Pretty good for a green mule |
We ended at that as we were out of time and had to go work for a living. We’re supposed to practice before next week, but it’s supposed to rain all weekend. We desperately need the rain so I’m trying not to whine about it. We’ll see if we can get something done. Maybe we’ll actually wake up early tomorrow and practice then. Last week I woke up, didn’t even hit snooze, just went straight to changing the alarm time and went back to sleep. I give it 50/50.
It takes a while for those greenies to figure out where all their feet are supposed to go!
I've ridden greenies who have natural jumping talent though. They just get it. Nilla has to really think about it, but she's trying.