Been a long time | Shouldn'ta left you

I'm back-logged about 3 lessons on this blog, although I had a 2 week hiatus because my barn was hosting shows on my lesson days and make-ups would have been too stressful. I came back to lessons and can honestly say I was terrible. The group of 5 of us were on  a 20 meter circle and D would should out a name of who to leave the circle to canter around the ring and rejoin. I was not firm enough with Chewie which meant falling into the circle and canter departs that ended in heading towards his friends rather than sticking on the rail. By the end I started to get what I needed to do. Push him out with my inside leg at the girth, outside leg behind the girth, inside rein keeps nose toward circle, outside rein slightly open. By doing this I was also prepared for the canter depart. And I needed to be firmer, no soft pats with the crop if he wasn't listening. I may have sat a couple bucks, too. Yeehaw.

My following lesson I had trouble keeping another pony on the rail and needed more leg. So obvious, but D had to walk up and really push my leg into the pony, then have me hold the reins steady to really get the point across. Road an older horse and learned he needed my support (re: holding the reins firm and up with elbows back) so he didn't trip because of our balance.

All in all, things are slowly coming together. I'm wondering if this is the sort of thing where your riding gets worse before it gets better, because you are re-learning how to do things correctly. This'll probably happen to me over and over again in my riding career, so I should just get used to it.

We are doing a horse show in less than a month, where I'll be doing a couple of flat classes, so the more progress I can make soon, the better!