Saturday, March 14, 2009

Trudi was right

it was an excellent lesson, despite the gale that blew RI's words away regularly.

I'd had my hands too far up and back, lower and forward is the key to molly - if you put them where we're all taught to have them, she starts to stress - get that, and the work is fantastic.

keep finger pressures on the left rein (that is, the left side of her head, whichever direction we're going) when she tries to set against the bit, and if necessary open the inside hand

and then of course wants she starts working properly she's more likely to continue. and when she does, i can put hands back central

i need to be quicker on those corrections

once I'd "got" it RI left me to my own devices and we continued working nicely. And of course the better that goes, the better able I am to keep myself right....

then RI got on to try the canter - fantastic canter she has!

We think if we can keep this up, she can go to a party and knock them for 6 ....need to take her somewhere to school away from home first.

and I must find somewhere to have lunge lessons....

Louise took heaps of photos, i shall have to take a USB stick down to get them (her camera, not mine) and then i'll post them on photobucket and link. I did take my camera which takes movies, but L wanted to use her own (which takes much better stills).

Next week when I'm away RI is going to school her one day

4 comments:

Di said...

Great Claire! I'm glad it went well, progress indeed!

Jean said...

The Classic hand position is always the ideal but...well, when the Spanish Riding School was in New York the last time, we all got to watch a schooling session. How refreshing to see the trainers put their hand wherever they needed to be to correct the horse and then go back to "Perfect." One youngster tending to evade by putting his head up. Down went the trainer's hands until the horse yielded and then back to ideal.

The trick, as you are discovering, is to make the corrections early enough, and quickly enough to fix the bad reactions before they become too big. And then to let go as soon as the horse is right. It's all a matter of feel and the only way to learn is to do it over and over and over......

Sounds like a really good lesson!!

Nicola said...

Snap!We both had a lesson..sounds good, cant wait to see the pics:)

trudi said...

Glad I was right, lol
Sounds excellent Claire, real progress for you.