I had my first lesson with Kim on Sophie today. It was...interesting. Sophie was very upset to be in the arena and not out with the other horses, especially since they were being turned out for the day. So we started out with walking skinny serpentines, doing lots of changes of direction to get her focusing on me, not how miserable she was being alone in the indoor. After she was mainly paying attention to me we started adding in stops as well. Then I would ask her to walk forward solely by lifting my seat. Which she ignored, so I would back it up with leg (though not fast enough for Kim!). We worked on that for a bit and then Sophie decided she was still unhappy about being in the indoor and started flipping her head.
Kim told me to urge her forward, so I would give with my hands while sitting up straight and giving her an open window to be able to move forward. Eventually during a move forward phase she broke out trotting, so we ended up trotting lots of serpentines, with her trying to slow down to toss her head every now and then. But there were breakthroughs...sometimes after a head tossing episode suddenly her head would come down, she would round to the bit and move beautifully. We started doing circles as well and got loads of nice work and less head tossing.
By the end of the lesson we were trotting around the whole ring working on stretching down and out while performing the most amazing trot ever. At that point Kim said she was looking like a Trakehner now and it was wonderful. Kim said that we should score well though and the she's a really nice mover. So that made me feel a lot better about everything.
And an interesting side note, Sophie is the boss of her little group in the pasture, even though she's younger and smaller than the other two horses. But she tells them were to go and they do it. I was hoping to get to The Tack Trunk today to pick up another trial saddle, but I just couldn't make the drive after spending all morning at the barn. My body was pretty exhausted from all of the gardening and cleaning over this last week. So we're going to try to make it out tomorrow morning before meeting up with my sister. Not ideal, but I needed a three hour nap and wouldn't have made it after. Hopefully the perfect saddle is there, and I can look at the KK's.
Kim told me to urge her forward, so I would give with my hands while sitting up straight and giving her an open window to be able to move forward. Eventually during a move forward phase she broke out trotting, so we ended up trotting lots of serpentines, with her trying to slow down to toss her head every now and then. But there were breakthroughs...sometimes after a head tossing episode suddenly her head would come down, she would round to the bit and move beautifully. We started doing circles as well and got loads of nice work and less head tossing.
By the end of the lesson we were trotting around the whole ring working on stretching down and out while performing the most amazing trot ever. At that point Kim said she was looking like a Trakehner now and it was wonderful. Kim said that we should score well though and the she's a really nice mover. So that made me feel a lot better about everything.
And an interesting side note, Sophie is the boss of her little group in the pasture, even though she's younger and smaller than the other two horses. But she tells them were to go and they do it. I was hoping to get to The Tack Trunk today to pick up another trial saddle, but I just couldn't make the drive after spending all morning at the barn. My body was pretty exhausted from all of the gardening and cleaning over this last week. So we're going to try to make it out tomorrow morning before meeting up with my sister. Not ideal, but I needed a three hour nap and wouldn't have made it after. Hopefully the perfect saddle is there, and I can look at the KK's.
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