Lesson With Cheryl

I had a great lesson with Cheryl this morning. It's very windy, the result of hurricane Igor off shore I presume. I walked Rogo down to the beach first, for a little treat. His second time and he was almost, not quite, rushing to get there. He loves it. When I made him turn to come back much sooner than the other night, so we could have our lesson, he dawdled and squirmed for a bit, but then went along. I think he's going to make a great hacking horse.

He wasn't overly eager to do trot work so Charyl had me put him on a 20 m circle and do walk trot transitions, reinforcing the leg aid with a tap if needed. This seemed to break up the boredom for him and he soon got forward. I'll have to remember that exercise. Then we worked on shallow loops from the rail to the 1/4 line and back at the trot, changing our bend and posting diagonal as we went. He is getting better at this and although he was stiff at first he came onto the bit nicely after a while and started bending nicely.

Then it was time for some canter work. Oh la la - it was beautiful! All the jump is back and then some. Forward and huge - how fun is that :) When we crossed the diagonal just as I went to do a simple change I thought I felt him bunch to do a flying change, but it was too late for me to change my mind and we trotted, then picked up the opposite lead. I didn't know if I'd imagined it or not, but when I came in the house afterward Doug mentioned to me that he was watching and had thought Rogo was going to do another flying change, yesterday being his first, with Megan. I had thought I shouldn't try it, because I want to make sure I can do it well and not screw him up, but now I don't want to teach him it's wrong... Also, I don't want to make it hard to teach counter canter... Guess I better get some advice.

Next we worked on leg yielding and tried it at the trot a little bit and got a few steps. We cantered out of it when we got to the rail, and he did that very nicely. With that we called it a day, or a lesson. I'm very happy with him and Cheryl seems to be too.