Friday, June 8, 2012

Flying Lead Changes for My Girl!




Here are some photos and video taken on January 3rd with Emily.  I am writing this entry on Saturday, February 11th.  So, during our Thursday night lesson this week, Violet and I had some good and bad moments.  Among the good moments were that we got flying lead changes in both directions!!!  We didn't get them all, but we got some pretty ones.  So, I managed to have three separate rides on both my horses this week that earned me some lead changes!!  I hope some day to train my horses to give them consistently.  That was the good part.  The funny/bad part was that Stacey had set up a course which required deep corners, tight turns and many changes of lead.  That's fine, but part of it would take us the bad direction by the gate.  We were supposed to travel around the jump, we emergency jumped going in that direction just a few days before.  And sure enough, Violet decided to leap away from the gate and took us so close to the standard that I hit it with my leg and we knocked it over.  She skittered a bit, so I circled her around and she had the temerity to look surprised to see the standard on the ground.  Embarrassing.  But we survived.  And our course was pretty good.  We had to redo the one outside line because we took it a bit rough.  In our second way through, it was embarrassing because we were supposed to halt and I asked for the halt right off the jump and she gave a screaming cartoon instantaneous absolutely statuesque square halt not to be obedient, but just to avoid the TERROR of the gate.  Honestly, I am so tired of riding in the indoor arena!!  But again, let me close by saying that she also gave me flying lead changes and I had three separate rides with lead changes this week!!  Props!