Me and my giraffe

So this last weekend we did a whole weekend adult riding class. 5 lessons in 3 days.
I was soo exited and had looked forward to this for 2 months.
We arrived on Friday after work and I could not believe my luck getting one of the private horses. This riding school sure has a lot of good horses and I have tried a few of them, always so happy with them!
She was suppose to be a gentle lady and I was flattered to be seen as good enough for her. And yes she needed the gentle touch. She was light on her feet, very pretty and had a good step / pace.

But her head... was in the sky all the weekend long. She looked like a giraff. My instructor was as desperate to get her head down as I was and the entire weekend was just one long fight about keeping my hands in the perfect way, to make her want to go to the bit. And with no success.
I felt I tried everything.
Normally I do not have problems getting horses to take the bit, but this lady was different.

After five hours desperately trying to get her to carry herself properly I finally had to cave in and go home deeply unsatisfied. I felt like a failure, and it seams I do not have the stomach for long lessons like these once.

I know I need the horse to carry herself correctly for her to stay healthy, but believe me, a long hack would have done this horse so much more good than five hours of me struggling on her back.
I think we both would have preferred it.

In retrospect I am not sure what I have learned...
No gallopp, no jumping, no fun stuff, just hard work with moving my hands one cm forward and backward, staying as still as I could in the saddle not to make her flinch and go all giraffe on my again.


Not sure I will go back.
I really need to get my confidence back before going there again!

Being an instructor

The first times my Hubby rode a horse with no instructor I was very busy with getting to know this new horse I was riding. Me myself and my horse.
I did not take much notice of Hubby.
That was until he was almost thrown off 4 times in half an hour...

As an experienced rider it is off course my responsibility to make sure he has a good introduction to the sport. I am not sure why I did not see that before...

As a 20 year old I worked as a riding instructor for kids learning to ride, but it is such a long time ago, and the ponies was slow and tired of the arena.

Now it is a grown man and a tall proud young Irish Warmblood.
Something entirely different...

So I did what I always do... I googled!
And I found a very useful tool, a lesson plan!
This brilliant web page har quite a few blog posts on instructing, but most importantly, when assigning to the news letter you get a lesson plan template.

I filled it out and had this planned:

In the stable/prep: 
* Learning about the horse boots and bell boots. How they are fitted and why we use them

Warm up:
* Riding out against the fence, not cutting corners in walk
* Round volts/circles, not square

Main part:
*Working on posting trot, low silent hands
* Riding in slalom/ weaving game

Cool down: 
* Talk about next time, plant a seed to go hacking soon
* Ask him to let out the rains (this was what brought on the first buck that almost sent him in the ground)

I felt very prepared, had a clear goal and all went to plan!
So pleased!

Careful... progress

So last week we had such a scare. My hubby was almost thrown off his horse 4 times. We are not sure what happened or why the horse was spooked. We certanly need to remove some ifs or buts for next time. No riding in the dark and hand walk the horses to the arena.

We all where sooo very nervous today. My hubby for being thrown off, - his horse for spooking hubby again and - me for being responsible for hubby not wanting to continue riding.

We hand walked the horses up to the arena where we ride. This time we went out early to make sure we had daylight. Harder to be spooked in sunshine :)
I used a lot of the time on Mr standing in the middle instructing hubby and his horse Ginger. Ginger walked with tiny slow steps making sure hubby was comfortable. I was not sure how much instruction to give and decided to constantly give small cues to make sure my hubby was concentration on something other than his fear.
It all seemed to work as after a few bumpy trotting steps, hubby and Ginger was back in the game again.

Both horses seemed more relaxed, and well ridden this time. We asked if the owners of the horses would make sure the horses was well exercised and they sure was.

Mr was stunning as ever, doing his job in his own speedy tempo. I am more used to him now, and him with me. I hope we will have many hours of fun together.
Next time I will add some ground poles to direct the horses in straight lines. There is a lot of cutting corners and bad navigation at the moment. Force ourself to steer the horses in good paths and teaching my hubby good arena etiquette

Hubby and Ginger