I'll confess that I spent part of a gorgeous fall day, working on the computer....trying to understand all the ins and outs of using music found in Creative Commons so that I could get my "Hay Day" video done and posted. Saturday and Sunday will each have two separate posts! This is for Nicole and Lily and Jet and Star. We actually had a lot more photos to process from Storms sessions, so his will be finished tomorrow, as well as the pictures from Sunday!
But, finally, we were out the door and on our way to work some horses. I really wanted Mike to come. Anyone that knows us, knows that goes without saying! Mike is my "ground person" and I am his! Don't think that professional trainers don't have someone giving them feed back on how their horses are looking. And if you've got a really good ground person, they make you a better rider...every time!
But for today, I wanted "photo boy" Mike! The weather has remained amazing so not only is it great training weather, you can't beat the pictures!
Today was the first weekend that Nicole, Lily and I did a "back to back"...Saturday and Sunday lessons in this gorgeous arena.
I could write an entire post just on how important it is to have the right "space" to train in. Up to this point, we've been working Jet at their place. Brad and Nicole worked very hard to get me as much good level work area as they possibly could and put up a wonderful safe round pen....a must for any trainer! I can get ALOT of work done in a round pen, but (if all goes according to plan) eventually you must have more room. It's time to move from a "kindergarten" class room to an elementary school class room. Needless to say, we're really happy we've found a place that's close by and delightful to work in.
I couldn't have been more pleased with Jet (and with Nicole and Star, too!). Having the opportunity to ride in this arena, we'll see dramatic improvements, not only in the horses but in Lily and Nicole as well! Jet is really still very "green" but I thought he was way ready to have more room to work in. Trail riding is great too, but I'm much more comfortable teaching them to canter on flat footing. There's enough going on with a young horse just learning how to balance a rider on nice flat footing without adding ups, downs and trees at the beginning. If you are learning to canter (or teaching a young horse to canter), you will make the most progress on some nice level ground where you can just relax and learn to connect up with your horse. In Colorado we had the luxury of great big flat fields...with NO rocks or woodchuck holes! I definitely took those big flat fields for granted. And all the prairie grass isn't as slick as the green stuff here!
Given that this was Jet's first real ride outside of a round pen, I thought he was a star! Given that he was still wrapping his mind (and body) around the concept of steering at the trot, I'm content to wait til next time to introduce some cantering!
Above, a little long lining to review and warm up!
A little bit of Jet's first ride in "the big ring"...where I discovered that (no real surprise!) Lily's stirrups don't go quite short enough for me...lol!