There won’t be much of a report for today’s lesson, as we’re having theory. Well, unless I am the only one showing up so I get to ride again, which is vaguely possible considering the time of the year and the collision between the match between Sweden and Greece. In fact, I am tempted to stay at home myself, but I probably won’t as I need to try to arrange a private lesson for next week. That’s our last week of riding until August.

So, why am I posting now, then? To catch up on last week’s lesson, of course. ;P

I ended up on Gamir, and since the paddock was incredibly dry and dusty, we rode indoors. It wasn’t too hot, actually, but hot enough that Gamir started out soft and limber from the get-go. That was quite different from how he tends to be in winter. We warmed up mostly on our own, so we didn’t get a lot of feedback right then, but it felt to me as if he moved with a longer strider rather than a quicker stride when asked to move forward a bit more. Keeping my mind on the difference is, slowly but surely, making me more aware of what exactly is happening.

The lesson itself focused on working towards a half-pass, though we started out just doing a leg-yield with the neck flexion in the direction of movement as opposed to away from the direction of movement. We then added the bend of the horses body once we were able to get good sideways movement while retaining the neck flexion. At a walk, I was able to more or less sort this out. Gamir is well-schooled and finds moving sideways pretty easy, though maintaining the flexion and the right amount of forward movement takes a bit more work. At a trot, it did not go so well. These sort of exercises demand a lot from my own body control and co-ordination, and I pretty much twist myself into a pretzel trying to do it at a trot.

I was pretty pleased with the start of the lesson, not the least because I felt as if I had a better grasp on how Gamir was moving, but I need to work a lot on my co-ordination. I suspect that if I wasn’t riding, it would be a lot worse in general, and I should probably get back to taking dancing lessons to work on it outside of the riding.