Changing it Up: Lesson Recap 1/24 and Saddle Fitting Update

L wasn't feeling well at all for my lesson on Sunday and for some reason I was more distracted and less motivated than usual so it was nice that we worked on a couple of slightly easier things.

We started off with warming her up nicely at the trot and she was actually a little sucked back. That almost never is the case with her but I had done quite a lot of canter the day before so I think she was just slightly tired. With my nice, slow pony who was really listening to me we started out by working on leg yields. 

We are still squarely on the leg yield struggle bus both because she's learning and because I'm proving to be completely incompetent at moving my body properly to get them done. Oh well, I've been working on them more in my schooling rides and they were slightly better in my lesson so after a couple of times in each direction we gave her a break and them moved to working on turns on the forehand.

We've worked on turns on the haunches before but this was the first time we worked on these. Again, once I grasped the concept she did them pretty well, especially for a first time. This is reminding me that I need to do a schooling ride or two where I work on turns on the haunches! Sometimes we work on something in a lesson where L warns me not to drill it and then I promptly forget to do it on my own at all. I've been toying with the idea of a lesson journal for that reason but have hoped that my blog will fill that purpose. Maybe I just need to go back and read them more!

Then we went to the canter. We are both getting better at the transition and she's been picking it up in a stride or two rather than 10 like it was taking before. So nice to have that progress :-) At the canter we worked on doing more straight work down the long sides and it was amazing! I felt like we were flying. She is developing more jump as she develops more strength but keeping the same maneuverability which makes it so much fun. She can turn, properly, on a dime and our 10 meter circles at the canter are easy because she's such an adorable little athlete.

In other news I've calmed down after the saddle fit debacle yesterday but I haven't changed how I feel about how it went. When I'm at the barn tomorrow I'm going to try to get some pictures of the underside to post on here and make sure that I'm not just completely missing something.

I've also been chatting with P, who also had a saddle fit appointment with H yesterday, and it sounds like things went really well for her. I'm going to chalk this up to H trying to fit a small pony, which is probably not as normal for her, and with a saddle that isn't one of the usual brands that she sees. I haven't lost faith in her as a saddle fitter but I'm not sure that I'll use her again in the future. Unfortunately I'm not even sure if I'll have that choice because I don't think I have many options for saddle fitters that will work with my saddle in my area.