Flying to close to the sun (or pony butt)

My group lesson yesterday started out pretty normally. There were four of us, myself being, per usual, twice as old as everyone else (yeah, I double checked, exactly twice as old as everyone else). I rode Pan who is a really wonderful little guy that probably has a lot of ribbons to his name in short stirrup. He responds really nicely to my leg, so I could just focus on keeping my shoulders back and looking good on him. We did our whole lesson in a "ride" (riding in a straight line, pony length apart). Went fine for the most part until we started cantering in said ride. Picture this: We are third in line, the first pony starts to canter. The pony in front of me (good ole' Joy) was not too eager to get into the canter...but Pan was! I had to really sit back and hold him at bay. Once Joy started cantering she let out a couple bucks - not sure if they were special delivery to Pan or just feeling like the whole thing was beneath her. That's when I maneuvered Pan away from the ride, figuring I'd pull him away from the bucking, without the pony behind me crashing into us.

But pushing Pan off the rail brought some sort of unbridled surge of energy and we were off, galloping at full speed past ALL the ponies. For a moment there, the only thing running through my brain was "WHEEEEEEEEEE!" which was promptly cut off by D very firmly suggesting half-halts. Oh, right. Bad pony?

At the end of the lesson, needless to say, I got a lecture about how ponies in a ride will do whatever the ponies in front of them do unless you show them that they should defer to you as their leader. And also, learn how to half halt properly, for the love of God and all that is pony.

Oopsie.

No regrets.