Trainer Ride: Lesson Recap 5/15

I really enjoy having an instructor that can ride my horse occasionally since I feel like it's such a great way for her to really feel what's going on in a way that she may not always be able to see from the ground (although L is damn good at seeing what's going on from the ground). It was actually part of why I decided to take lessons with L since not only was she willing and able to ride but she was small enough to ride my smallish dressage pony in a way that another instructor might not have been.

With that in mind, I really don't want to go more than a few months without having her hop on and make sure that I'm not setting Katai up with any habits. I have a pretty good feel for when something isn't going the way that it should but I'm not nearly the rider that L is. So, at my last lesson I brought up that I wanted L to ride Katai again soon. I mentioned that we could wait until after the show but L said that she wanted to ride at the lesson today instead. Then I'll have two more (since I'm getting a lesson at the show grounds) lessons before the show.

Love the extra fluffy mane in this one

In the meantime L had three lessons scheduled to ride with Susanne Winslade but found out that two of her client horses that she'd planned on riding were lame. When she mentioned it to Susanne apparently Susanne made a comment along the lines of, "Too bad you can't ride that spectacular little pony that your student rode on Monday." L messaged me on Tuesday but unfortunately it just wasn't in the budget for me to pay for any additional lessons. At any rate I was thrilled to hear that Susanne really liked Katai and that L would have wanted to ride her in a lesson. The only comment that Susanne made was that Katai was really locked up on the left side which both L and I are aware of.

L started off working on just kind of figuring out where Katai was at since it's been quite some time since she rode last. Then she started working on getting her to release to the left. At first there was some not so pretty stuff but then she really did it and L really got her back up in that direction which is tough impossible for me to do.

After that she was working on doing some sitting trot, transitions within the trot, shoulder in, haunches in, and canter in each direction. There were some great moments, good moments, and not so good moments but Katai tried everything that L challenged her with. She had a few minor moments but absolutely no melt downs. I asked L how she felt and was extremely flattered when L said that I'd been doing a good job with her and that Katai felt great :-) L also mentioned that everything she was schooling was from 1st level! She said that some of it wasn't very good yet but still, it made me so happy to hear that she's getting to the point where we can at least school it!

A moment of sass

However, we were both annoyed to see that my saddle is really sliding forward again. Katai has lost some weight (in a totally good way as you can see from the photos) but it means that her saddle is sliding again and not necessarily a great fit anyway. We talked about getting the Prestige Lucky trial again (I'll be calling on Monday) and I'm really hoping that it will be the answer. L had to get off twice to adjust my saddle today which is demoralizing at best. I'll be riding her with the half pad again until I can get a saddle that fits.