Today Katie ended up not having to teach skiing so she and I both went to the barn. I decided to ride Bestie for my lesson so that Katie could ride Dude down the road. I had ridden Bestie last night and she was really good in the indoor. Today, when I entered the indoor, Emma warned me about the roof shedding. The temps today got up into the mid 30s for the first time in weeks, so the snow on the indoor roof was sliding off periodically. The last time I was in there and it happened, I had Bestie on the lunge line and she freaked out. Needless to say, Emma's warning did not make me feel too warm and fuzzy about the lesson!
To make a long story short, Bestie was awesome! We warmed up at the walk for quite a bit, and then practiced walk/halt transitions. Emma had been riding her horse Berry and kept the mare in the indoor, so Bestie wasn't alone, which was probably good. We moved on to walk/trot/halt transitions on a circle half the size of the indoor. Again, she was good. Not perfect, but well-behaved even with occasional swooshes of snow falling off the roof. She got better and better at the walk/trot transition, and Emma showed me a way to signal to her to slow down with little repeated half halts. The first time I wasn't consistent enough, but the second and third circles she was much better. And the good thing is that the repeated small half halts don't make her all cranky. Once she gets all worked up, I might as well get off. She loses focus.
All in all it was a really good lesson and gave me some things to work on with her. Three rides this week; nice! We had planned to ride in the field, but by the time my lesson got over and Katie returned from her road trip with Dude, we decided to bag the walk in the field and just put them away. All the other horses were coming in for dinner time -- good timing for Dude and Bestie to just hang out.
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