Welcome To Your Weekly Barn Tour

I'll be the rider for the evening :) Once again, a new horse to ride! Splash was lame, so Chase was a last minute substitution. Pretty sure you've seen all the adult sized lesson horses now!

Your obligatory crappy iPhone cross tie pic

Chase is a small (guessing 14.3hh or so) Morgan type. He normally has the same rider every week, so he`s not a usual suspect as far as horse assignments go. As soon as I got on, I was in love with him. He`s super forward, a bigger mover, and is really on the aids. He`s also one who knows how to use his hind end, so you get that lovely feeling of power. He`s quite quick, but so much fun - he gets the big horse striding no problem, but has the little horse turning radius :)

Flatwork was super - I was having trouble keeping the grin off my face. I find him super easy to ride, so even the two point/no stirrups stuff was easy - I felt like we hadn't even started and our warmup was over.

Jumping was also super. He really takes you to the jumps and isn't spooky at all. Canter departs on the first go round were a bit of a mess, with him racing into it a bit. We trotted most of the fences. The turns were a bit motorbike style as well - I've gotten a bit out of practice slowing things down and keeping those shoulders up when my usual rides are more about just keeping the forward momentum! Thank goodness he's fun size - it might have been scary for me on a big horse. Second go round was much better, with me remembering to ride into my corners and getting a nicer canter.

Since no one had issues with the course, we finished early and had fun riding bareback. We were told to keep it to walk/trot, which was fine by me - not sure I'd want to canter a new horse bareback quite yet! Again, I had a lot of fun - I was reminded of all those great times with my pony as a kid, before I owned a saddle. All the no stirrups work, saddles that rarely fit me, and not to mention all the different horses to ride seem to have really helped my balance. At one point we were trotting and I guess speeding up/motorbiking and I started posting and riding 20m circles to balance him up without really thinking about it. Then I was like "Wait, this is crazy...I have no saddle.....I can't do this!" Best part of the lesson? "Oh wait, I CAN do this and it's easy!"

Another bad pic. You're welcome!

That's all you get for this week - no lesson Saturday as I'm off to Vancouver this afternoon for a long weekend in the city with friends (and G, of course!). Back to your regularly scheduled programming next Wednesday.