Getting Comfortable

This week's lesson went much better than last week's. I was sooo nervous last week. But this week, as I sort of started to do things right, I got a lot more confident.

This week we rode Porsche. I thought she was the Tennessee Walking Horse, but I guess I was wrong, since DeDe said she's a quarter horse. She was such a sweetheart though! All she wanted was for us to pet her and give her love. It was the sweetest thing. And I could tell Julie liked her much better than she liked Lola!

We started the lesson with groundwork first. It was super intimidating! She makes it look so easy, but when I'm not on the horse, it's a lot harder to ask for what I want. DeDe has us lunge Porsche, but it didn't work so well. We're really bad at it! Julie had trouble getting her to keep moving, and I had a hard time asking her to go faster. We're thinking that we're going to do groundwork once a month, so we can, one day, be better at it.

Julie rode first this time. I took pictures while she reviewed last week's riding. She practiced taking Porsche around the ring at a walk, stopping, turning, and backing up. She looked way more comfortable this week. Way less nervous. I feel like she's doing really well, considering that she's never been on a horse before these lessons. The only thing I think she really needs to work on is sitting up straighter in the saddle.

I felt much better about my time in the saddle. I still definitely felt nervous as I was getting on Porsche, since groundwork didn't go so well. But I got comfortable really fast. The first couple times I asked the horse to stop, she didn't listen well, but DeDe stopped me and told me to hold the reins closer to her mouth, be very loud and firm when I give the command, and if she doesn't listen, then hold the reins back until she stopped. Immediately, I felt a huge difference and a huge confidence boost!

Turning was sort of interesting, too. The ring was a little muddy, so Porsche kept making these huge wide turns to avoid it. I felt much better about turning this week though. DeDe told me to look in the direction I wanted to go, move my shoulders, and then use the reins. It worked perfectly :)

I'm really happy with the way lessons have been going. I'm taking an extra lesson by myself tomorrow, which I'm really excited for. Maybe I'll get to ride Pandora!