Saturday Riding

I rode Dandy today to prep him for our lesson tomorrow.  When I went to the barn Thursday evening, I discovered that he had a 11" by 1" scrape on the inside of his right flank.  There was also a four inch scratch lower on his rear cannon bone that had bled.  His leg was slightly swollen.  I figure he must have been rolling and stuck his leg through the fence and then yanked it out scraping his whole leg.  It wasn't terribly serious, but I got a bit upset that it could have been much worse.

Today, the swelling was entirely gone, so I practiced cantering and counter-cantering, trotting figure eights and ten meter circles and simple lead changes.  He's getting really good at changing leads.  In fact, I don't have the bring him back to the trot.  When we're cantering on one lead and I push with my inside leg and bend him the other direction, he takes a trot step and then jumps right back into the canter on the other lead.  I hope we'll get to work on flying lead changes soon...

I took him over a single crossrail about a dozen times in both directions, and he seemed to be moving out really well.  Thursday night, he was a bit short at the canter with his leg sore.  This was the test to see if he's ready for a lesson tomorrow.

Paige is giving me a group jumping lesson along with a few other girls around my age at the barn.  She said that when they did a group lesson over Christmas break, she had them switch horses halfway through, so they could feel what it was like to ride another horse.  If I let someone else ride Dandy, I'm worried I'll never get him back!