I know everyone, finally a Thursday Funtime post. Blame the bloody weather. It snowed so much over two weeks, we had to cancel lessons at the barn due to the freezing temperatures and hard ground. But we shall hope that snow is no longer in our forecast.
For my birthday, my mum gave me a USEF High School Equestrian Athlete saddle pad. I am so in love with it! I used it yesterday in my lesson and Hercules looked so dapper with it.
However, I really wish the patch was on both sides because since it is on one side, the other side makes the pad just look like a normal saddle pad. Oh well, I still love it dearly!
In my lesson, it was switched up a bit. In the beginning, as always Hercules is a handful because everyone else in coming in for dinner and he's being ridden. In order to avoid his crazy antics, I trotted him in tight but big figure eights, constantly changing his direction and getting him to focus on me and not the horses coming in. It worked marvelously. I warmed him up while waiting for Kitchie to start my lesson since she was still working with a previous lesson. He calmed down after I cantered him around a few times in each direction.
Finally, it was time for my lesson! I rode with another lady who is a beginner as well as a young girl who is also a beginner. The little girl was so adorable! I wish I started riding at her age. She was probably about what 5 or 6? We all mainly worked on trotting. Kitchie had me pick up the trot and then she critiqued what I did wrong (I looked down for my diagonal). She also had me drop a stirrup and maintain posting. It really wasn't that hard since in my past IEA lessons we had to trot with no stirrups. I was a bit rusty but that will be changed soon. After I trotted without one stirrup, she told me to pick my stirrup up without stopping or looking. The first time I got instantly and she was so impressed she said she was going to tell Ryan Minor who is a fantastic clinician and trainer whom Kitchie taught to ride about my stirrup pick up. The second time getting my stirrup back took a few minutes since I was being bounced around. Since we were working on trotting, we worked a lot on equitation. I maintained Hercules' trot and my posture that Kitchie said I would have won an equitation class if I was showing.
Kitchie was talking to me asking who ran the ODU Equestrian Team. Since I didn't know, she said she was going to look it up because she said I should be on the team even though I am at TCC. I just asked one of the ladies who runs the team and she said that I have to be an ODU student in order to ride on the team and be in the horse riding club. I was bummed but oh well. I'll have to wait until WWU to ride on a team.
I did practice posting at the trot with no stirrups and trust me; I am sore. I am sore because I missed two weeks, but I haven't lost my groove. Haha!
Sadly, we didn't get to do any jumping. Kitchie said I could stay a bit later for the next lesson so that I could jump but it was getting late and cold.
Well, that's the funtime!
Toodles!
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