All The Learning

Puppy princess is feeling much better after her spay. She is looking so grown up!

When I decided to move to this barn, which meant no more weekly lessons, I certainly never intended to stop taking advantage of learning opportunities. It was just that I didn't want to continue to do lessons each week every week. That was coming both from a budget perspective and because after all these years of weekly lessons (mostly not riding) I'm just tired of having a weekly commitment every week. On top of that, I learned so much from Jane and then with the winter we had we took a big step back so much of what I'm working on right now is getting her back to where we were.

Of course I booked a couple lessons with S2 right away when I moved and when we decided at the second lesson that I wouldn't be going to the show at the end of May I moved my show budget to lessons and booked three more right away instead. That makes for 5 lessons with S2 in May and 4 of those were within a week. During one of those lessons she told me that Kristi Wysocki was going to be at the barn teaching a clinic and that she'd encourage me to ride with her.

My tack closet at home continues to get more packed.
I can't wait until I can move into a tack locker at the barn!

I'd taken a fair amount of time off work so I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get the time off I needed for the clinic but in the end I was able to leave a bit early and do a late ride and while it was a little tight it all ended up working out. I truly wish I had clinic media but unfortunately there wasn't anyone there taking pictures and in the rush to change into barn clothes I left my phone in my car and just didn't think to see if someone could get any media.

I had been warned that Kristi could be blunt but I do really well with blunt. I like people who tell it like it is even if it's brutal. It's just the way I learn best. However, I never even saw that side of Kristi because she liked both of us and actually had very little feedback about the things we got to during that lesson. Part of that was because Katai was busy being the spookiest pony she's been in a REALLY long time with the sound system on in the arena so Kristi spent too much time helping me work through the spooks and even feeding Katai sugar :)

However, we still did get a lot of riding done including lots of trot, leg yields, canter-trot transitions, half halts work, a bit of work on my position and posting, and on generally slowing down the walk and trot after the canter. I got complements on our leg yields (totally Jane's doing) as well as my geometry which was AWESOME to hear coming from a judge especially since it's going to take good geometry to score really well on an average moving pony.

Off topic but this is maybe Katai's 10 ride ever :)

In all honesty she had very little to say. She wanted me to keep my elbows closer to my sides (yeah I flap when I'm concentrating on things haha), and to pause more at the top of my posting. I also got a couple reminders to look up. When we went to canter it fell a bit more off the rails (other than the spooking which was already solidly off the rails) because once Katai is asked to canter she thinks only canter is a thing. She helped me just slowly work through it but there wasn't anything groundbreaking. Just good solid, patient, riding.

In the end I'm really glad I rode with her and I got some really good feedback but I continue to go back to how incredible Jane is and she charges less than a 7th of that lesson for an hour vs. 45 minutes.

At this point I'm going to take a longer break from lessons. If anything, the lack of anything really ground breaking from that lesson (which again was at least partially caused by Katai's spookiness) really makes me want to continue to push through the things I know we need to work on more before I pay for more lessons. Between the things I learned from Kristi and the things I learned from S2 I have some additional items to work on as well as all of the work that Jane instilled in me so I'm really confident that we can get a ways now ourselves and then hopefully get S2 involved again as we get a bit closer to my next potential show!