Look Mama, I made it!

....around the entire ring without breaking the canter! Actually, I would not want my mom to see that because she is deathly horrified of me falling off and I wasn't exactly graceful.

In any case, the victory canter required a lot of false starts on the wrong lead, some pulling on the mouth due to poor balance that led to a hasty trot and finally, a canter around the ring that may not have ended gracefully, but at least it ended with no one worse for wear. Turns out, I get really confused, while cantering, what my left hand is versus my right, because my instructor was telling me to hold on to some main with my left hand and open up the rein a little with my right and had to keep saying, "your OTHER right!"

Also interesting, she had me do this smaller square around four cones, pushing in with my outside leg at the turn and it felt wonderful, like Chance was reacting immediately and with energy to my leg.

I will admit that the canter still scares me a little. I remember cantering on some older horses and it was really just like floating on a couch. Not Chance! Who, by the way, is a quarter pony - short of a horse by a half inch. I love the little guy.