Good Timing

Good news: this weekend has not added to our snow total for the year!

Bad news: everything is getting rained on instead!

But like I said in comments to last entry, I'm in the weird position ride now of being excited for mud season.  So an above-freezing rain to wash away the frozen yuck is okay by me, and being stuck in the indoor for a few more days is opportunity to do our homework.

I have been holding out on you guys; Tuck and I are back in school.

I've maybe mentioned before that one of the (many, many) neat things about the round barn is that some of our barnmates are DQs.  I say that with great love; they are wonderful people with wonderful horses, and it's both fun and inspiring to see "real dressage" on a regular basis.  And of course they take lessons, so I've been keeping an eye out.  Watching the horses, watching the riders.  Listening to the reports of my eventer friends at the barn as they've started taking lessons with the dressage trainer, too.  Catching, when I could, pieces of their lessons.

The last of those is what sold me.  I already knew that I liked the way this instructor's students rode and the way their horses went and developed.  I knew I was in-the-abstract interested in lessons, but I also had a list of reservations.  All the usual suspects, right?  Money, energy, scheduling.  Rusty rider on scruffy horse with no intention of trotting down centerline in the near future, if ever again.  I wanted instruction and guidance, I didn't want to be locked back into someone else's program, and I certainly didn't want to waste anybody's time.  But I watched some lessons, and saw that instructor (aside from being Really Really Good, which I already knew) was both positive and precise.  Which are important traits to me, and which are hard to find in the same trainer.  I went away, I mulled it over, and I asked my friends for instructor's contact info.  I figured that I couldn't have this caliber of opportunity in front of me and not at least ask if she'd be willing to teach us.

We've had two lessons so far.

It's been great.

I wasn't sure how Tuck would react to being back in dressage lessons again.  Before the first, we spent some time walking up at the far end of the ring while the previous lesson wrapped up; he had an ear glued to her the whole time, clearly wondering what I'd gotten him into this time?  But so far he's lapped the work up and asked for more, which makes a lot of sense given that most of what we've done so far has involved my position, my balance, reducing the amount of work that I'm doing -- heels away and toes forward, looser disemployed leg, softer feet, body back and post smaller, carry a closed hand -- and making it easier for him to carry me.  It's basic stuff and it's fantastic.  This is actually something I've gestured towards in this last year of working on our own; it's been clear for ages that my instinct is always to do more and that isn't a bad thing -- I have a good strong defensive seat, frex, which can come in Real Handy on XC! -- but there is such a thing as doing too much and getting in the horse's way.  I'm pleased with the work we've done to break our dressage-angst vicious cycle, and I am even more pleased now to have the chance to develop good new habits to replace the old.

The horse-shaping and horse-training stuff we've touched on so far has been useful, too -- mostly sharpening and improving our transitions, but also snippets of philosophy and tactics, like giving the fatiguing rider (from a stretch of stirrup-free rising trot) a rest by cantering rather than walking so that the horse doesn't develop a habit of thinking that a tired rider means it's time to quit, that have me excited to see what else we'll learn down the road.

(The horses get to rest walking, and that's an important part of the lesson, too.)

I'm also tickled by how much crossover there is between what we're doing here and what will help our distance riding.  Most of it is gratifying but not surprising -- it's not exactly news to me that doing less work and being easier for the horse to carry will help us as we go down the trail -- but today, while working on the way I interact with my stirrups, instructor mentioned that she often taps her toes in her stirrups to check how much pressure she's applying and I flashed back on Mel's mention a while back of that same exercise.

And instructor seems to enjoy Tuck an awful lot and says all kinds of good things about his rideability and work ethic, and I am a total sucker for people who flatter my horse.

So I am pretty happy with this and pretty excited to see where it will take us, and it is taking a little sting out of New England's being New England.

(We did get out for a very short hack yesterday, though, and it was glorious.)