Ladies riding trip to Ocala

Peter had three potential horses for us to ride, none of whom were on his farm (the reasons were unclear to us, because he owned 2/3 of them). Because we were unclear about how anything worked in the horse world in the Ocala area, we did not realize that Peter’s friend Katie had to haul the horses we were riding from an hour away. Regardless, on our first day, only one horse was sound enough to ride, and Lisa graciously let me ride him. He was a 5 year old Thoroughbred named Bravo. Black and beautiful! He was so sensitive and really had an engine. So I got on him and zoomed him around, having a great time at the walk/trot/canter when Katie stopped me and informed me that I was going WAY too fast. Who knew? I just thought it was normal. Her philosophy, especially about thoroughbreds, was to see how slowly you can go. Peter and Katie use the words “canter backwards” for a mental image of how to slow your horse down at the canter (as opposed to chasing). Because I couldn’t get this, Katie had me canter on the ground. So I did. Whoa, that’s a little fast, she said. Ooops. So apparently I canter forwards AND backwards too fast. Regardless, when I got back on Bravo, it worked much better and I was able to get a nice slow temp canter. On Thursday, we did sequential lessons b/c Katie was not comfortable teaching two together yet. OK by us! We videoed almost the whole lesson for each other. Rose, Katie’s lovely gray thoroughbred, held a LOT more pressure in her reins than Bravo did, and we did some lateral work and counter canter. At first we did turn on the forehand then turn on the haunches. She was quite sensitive and I ended up having her go forward and then turned her too much and it was a disaster (#firstworldproblems). As long as I used light aids and had her do a step at a time things worked out OK. Then we did w/t/c, working on me sitting up, using my outside aids, cantering backwards, controlling my post so she got round, then we did counter canter and the whole idea was to keep my body in the same bend on the counter canter as the true canter. Rose kept wanting to switch leads, so I had to be super careful with my body. She also had me do a super small circle in the true canter before that, and I am not sure why. Lisa had an amazing lesson on Bravo….both jumping and flat, and learned similar things. Specifically, thinking about keeping your seat feather light (on the down post), keep elbows soft (like you are holding hands or dancing).

Overall, from Peter and Katie, we learned to sit feather light, canter backwards, use outside aids, ride the horse you want, not the horse you think you have, lead with your hips over jumps, use your post and body to control the tempo.