Andrea's Lesson on Pro

I was sort of nervous about how this lesson was going to go. Pro had been doing SO amazing about a week ago. Then he had his melt-down with Kate, a confidence building session with me, and he was starting to get back to himself when the heat struck. Neither Kate nor I managed to get much riding done while it was 100+ out, so Pro had gone a few days without work. Add that to an insane morning which left me stressed out before I even got to the barn and well, it seemed like a recipe for disaster.

As soon as I got in the ring Gayle pointed out 2 things she wanted me to not do/do. 1) Do not keep breaking my wrists and pulling Pro's jaw down. I freely admit to this fault and it's a good thing to have someone remind me of. 2) Move my entire thigh back about 6-8" on the saddle so that I can keep the front of my body in line and straight. We went onto a big circle and I tried to keep those two things in mind. Pro, however, decided that he didn't want to show off what an awesome boy he'd been being and was ignoring me, ignoring my legs, and far to interested in his mommy sitting beside the ring. Gayle had me bring my legs off and "slap" him with my legs rather than squeeze to try to get him listening. Pro, ever up to the challenge, ignored that and kept avoiding the aids by hollowing his back and lifting his head. Gayle took my inside rein and managed the rein portion for me while I concentrated on getting Pro to actually acknowledge and get in front of my leg.

Once he wasn't ignoring me quite so much, Gayle had me work on "plugging my seat bones" into the long muscles of Pro's back. She told me to envision that my seat bones were like one of those kid's toys where there are the different shapes and holes and that my seat bone should plug into Pro's back muscles. After a little squirming I felt like I had it. Every time he stepped forward with his left hind I could feel it lifting my seat bone and I could control how far forward his leg went with the tension in my abs and seat. Then we added the right one and it was amazing how fast everything came together. From crazy-arab to dressage pony in about 30 minutes. It was great, because I would sometimes manage to get that same feeling on my rides by myself, but I didn't really understand why that worked. I just knew that if I rode like I imagine dressage riders rode things worked better.

We then carried it up into the trot for a few minutes and worked on getting him to go forward, but not so far forward that I couldn't control the movement with my seat bones and my abs. Gayle made me post while trying to do all this, which was good because I tend to be "lazy" and just sit the trot so I don't have to worry about re-finding that position. We worked a little bit on me trying to roll forward onto my thigh at the trot so that my front stayed flat. That I don't think worked as well, but after the lesson she mentioned that Kate's saddle might not fit me super great. Since I'd already been considering getting a Wintec with a changable gullet at some point, this just provides justification to maybe do it sooner. Gayle went in to trim hooves at that point, but Kate convinced me to do enough canter work for her to get pictures. His canter was so amazing that I'm glad she did. :)