Lesson #5 From Aug. 27, 2018

Honestly I was dreading this lesson a bit. I hadn’t been feeling right. You know when you just feel like you aren’t one with your own body. Like you don’t really control it. Anyways I was having one of those days. Ok... more like weeks. I swear it’s just a new normal for me to feel like crap lol. I even managed to get car sick within 3 minutes of being in the car. But I wasn’t going to submit to this. I did my best to psych myself up on the hour ride up there.

Once there I felt a bit better. I focused on talking and grooming to get my mind off of it.

I got to ride Luna again. She is a sweet pretty grey mare that usually has just one lil spook in her. She seemed extra sweet this day. Maybe she was just happy with her fresh pedicure lol.

Once in the arena we walked quite a bit to limber up while me and my instructor talked. The whole lesson was extremely enjoyable. I felt like A) I may of actually made some progress and B) My trainer and I bonded a bit.

I struggle to feel bonded to people. Maybe it’s my awkward nature, maybe it’s my negative inner monologue, maybe it’s just my imagination after all. In any case it was even more chill and encouraging than usual and I really needed that. I needed to feel like I belonged a bit and she made me feel that way. I really can’t express how much that means to me.

Once we warmed up she had me drop my stirrups and practice leg yields and learn and practice haunches in. It’s SO NICE learning how a new movement should feel on an experienced horse first! In the past I had tried to learn a few different movements by reading, watching videos, and trying to get my MUCH lesser trained horses to do them. And although we did something I never knew if it was correct because I didn’t know how it was supposed to feel in the first place. So now I know how haunches in should feel and I’m so thankful for it!

After doing lots of stirrupless dressage which I LOVED! We did move on to some small jumps. This mare is similar to my first horse in that she overthinks and gets the zoomies!!!! But my first horse was much worse, of course I’m sure most was my lack of experience.

I have to say I always feel like I do dressage much better than jumping lol.