We cantered!

Pro and I had our first canter in a lesson with Gayle on Friday. :) I'm very excited and happy with how he did.

Thursday night when I rode he started doing mini-spooks in the corner near his paddock gate. I'm not sure what he thought he saw, but he would occasionally just bulge in and try to give it the death stare as we went by. He worked pretty well despite having to deal with that.

When Kate got out on Friday she said he'd freaked by the bunny tree on Wed, so we figured that he was in one of those moods this week. When I got on for the lesson he was still looking in that corner, and it didn't help that both my dad and Kate were standing there giving him extra reason to look. So it reverted into one of our original lessons for about 10 minutes where if he didn't want to stay bent properly he got to spin around with his head pulled to the side until he decided that he was willing to think about what I was asking again. Gayle had us use his annoyance against him and had me work on using that energy and bend from the spinning to get him set up correctly on the circle. So our lesson ended up being like 5 min walk, 5 min trot, 10-15 min walk, 15 min trot, 5 min canter (roughly). So not our normal progression. We got a really awesome trot going pre-canter. Hopefully Kate will update with some pictures. It was this awesome forward trot.

When we started cantering Gayle's first comment was that I need to work on the lunge at the canter ;). But once I realized we weren't supposed to be doing 2-point "baby" cantering with him and sat up and got my legs off my seat fixed itself. Pro did awesome at the canter, very balanced and forward. We went back to the trot for a little bit and he started stretching for the bit even more and opening up his throat-latch some so he didn't feel as compressed.

The most useful thing I got from the lesson that I can use every day though was the idea of bending. I knew the whole "inside leg at the girth, outside leg behind the girth" thing, but wasn't sure how to apply that with the idea that we're not supposed to squeeze. Gayle said it's just adjusting your seat bones/thighs and not using your lower legs. So instead of me making a rectangular box with my legs and the reins, I make sort of an arc with my aids to channel him in.