Lesson and Pic of the potential Hobbes Stand-in

I had a lesson last night on Hobbesy...he was extremely lazy and felt more off than usual. I was trotting him around (well, he was jogging and I was pushing like nobodies business) and my trainer told me to stop working so hard. Huh? How the heck am I gonna get this big lug moving?? The wheat thresher roaring next to us kept me from hearing her explanation...when I finally stopped to talk to her she put me back out on the rail and said 'do transitions'. So we did. And guess what? Hobbes magically got moving! I swear, I have been riding for years and I never knew transitions got the horse moving forward...how have I missed this important tidbit? I've been saving transition work for after we're warmed up. Sometimes I am amazed at how little I know.

Anyway, he worked out of his offness and we worked on a nifty new exercise...slightly modified b/c of the jumps all in the way. You circle all the way down the arena, overlapping each circle but moving over so you move from one end to the other. This involves continual rebalancing (half halts!) and if done correctly, a circle to a shoulder fore to a circle and so on. We sucked at it...but it was certainly informative of how much we sucked : )Lastly, we worked on my seat. And then some. Egads...my seat is bad. I ride off my inner thighs, ya'll. How in the hell do you stop this? We did sitting trot w/ no stirrups (fine), and then moved on to attempting to lift one leg away from the saddle while not moving the seat (not possible). I'm not kidding, I can't do it at all. Can anyone? So we then did the extreme chair seat while sitting the trot...ie. legs off the saddle and folded forward in front of you so you're basically perched on your seat alone. I felt like my seat bones were drilling a hole in poor Hobbes' back. I'm pretty sure that's wrong. So there's some homework for me!

And lastly, I've got another appt. to go ride Nines, the grey TB, again. We're going to do a trail ride to ensure his sanity. Unfortunately, no one can go with me. Its sorta nerve-racking to be thinking about spending so much money without someone else's thumbs up. My trainer works full time so she can't go. She did see the short videos and said he looks nice...sort of a Hobbes but younger and without the lameness. Yep, that's exactly what I wanted. Anyway, here's a pic of him...its a year or two old, he's actually almost all white now, and is becoming more of a fleabitten grey. He's so cute!