The morning was spent online doing the change direction at a trot without breaking gait. Sue did fairly well at this considering she had not done it before and is nervous at turning and facing me and then going the other direction! Anyway, we had a lot of fun at this and made some improvements in maintaining gait.
Sue felt claustrophobic when everyone started riding. I was instructed to do the hindquarter/forequarters turning task and then move on. Everyone else was doing it at a stand still. But Sue felt better getting to move, and move we did.
Then we all walked along the wall and did 360 degree turns. We turned 180 with the hindquarters and came back around with the forequarter turn. After we had done that for some time, Sue actually got pretty good at it. We got some nice compliments from Jenny.
Then we started trotting and did our turns in the corner. There were more horses than corners so we bunched up a bit in the corners. I was instructed just to ride on the inside of the arena. Jenny thought that Sue might feel terribly claustrophobic if someone passed her between her and the wall. So we did our turns and whipping around the arena without getting too close to riders and horses.
Every now and then a corner would get empty and we would zip to the corner and do what everyone else was doing. Some horses made me and Sue a little nervous, so we tried to stay away from them. Well, it was the people using their carrot sticks with quite a bit of movment. You see, Sue and I don’t really like those carrot sticks when they move!
We did this a long time. We actually got relaxed enough that we made it out to riding on the wall. We kept an eye on all the horses that scared us and tried to stay away from them.
Occasionally, during the riding portion a horse with a carrot stick rider would come right to Sue’s head. That scared her a lot. The horse coming at her scared her and the carrot stick scared her. Sue picked her head way up and tensed up. I kept her head facing the scary horse and rider and we backed up fast!
I got to make that very low key quiet scream a couple of times. You don’t want to scream bloody murder when riding a horse that feels like it’s going to jump out from under you. I’ve developed this nice quiet scream for instances like this.
During the last portion of this clinic, someone actually tossed a carrot stick to another rider. It was about 10′ away from me and I got to make that low quiet scream sound again as we backed up really fast!
BUT, that was it! No boot-scooting spooks occurred during the entire day! My entire rear end stayed completely in the saddle. I was very pleased at this.
At the end, we did drop-to-a-trot teardrop canters. Sue and I did drop-to-a- walk teardrops. She actually trotted a bit going counter clockwise on the wall. Sue leans a bit towards pacy, so to have her trot is a thrill indeed. If she can trot, she can canter! Our drop-to-a-walk (and then trot off) was very speedy and very smooth. I felt like I could have carried a glass of water and not spilled a drop!
As soon as we were done, I hopped off. There were horses cantering near us. I knew that this made Sue just a bit nervous and I wanted to get off and find a safe place for her to stand in the arena.
When everyone did this cantering task, we adjourned to our horse shoe circle and everyone got to tell what they had learned that day.
When it was my turn, I said that I had been nervous about having Sue do any turns as she always felt like she was ready to explode. But today, having to do so many of them-helped her relax.
Jenny complimented Sue on how fast she relaxed and how good she did.
When Jenny was done saying wonderful things about Sue, Sue came up behind me (I was sitting on a barrel) and nudged my back twice.
Wow
I think she was thanking me for a day well done!