My First Clinic

"She is just the cutest thing..."

I have been riding with a group of fantastic women for a year now- all of them ride dressage. When I moved to Cotton Meadows, I had only a rudimentary understanding of the dressage world. At first, I was super determined to stick with hunters, but after a full of year of nagging, these ladies finally finagled me into a dressage clinic with Wolfgang Scherzer.

Shout out to Tammy, who gave me her lesson spot and was kind enough to let me use her dressage saddle (since I don't have one)! And thanks Karen for helping me tack up (lol) those dressage saddles have super goofy billets...

I told Wolfgang that Ruby and I had only done about a half dozen dressage lessons plus a few training rides with Debi. He was still very polite and patient, although I am sure I am much below the skill level of his usual students.

We started out with the basic warm-up: walk, trot, accepting the bit, getting round, etc. Ruby has a tendency to lock up on the right, so we spent a fair amount of time trying to get her to be more supple in the neck. Next, we focused on me: I lock up on Ruby, especially when I have a short rein: to help with this, Wolfgang had me go around on more of a 'half/medium' rein, working on keeping my shoulders and elbows flowing: at one point, he took the rein (with me continuing to hold them as well) to show me the amount of pressure I needed for contact (yup, I had WAY too much haha). The canter has always been difficult. Ruby will be super nice at the trot, but the second I ask for the canter transition, she wants to take off running. It took a God-awful number of circles, but she did finally come back to me, relax, and take contact with her head nice and supple/relaxed. Maybe he was just being nice to the newbie, but he seemed to like Ruby and thought I did a good job.

Many of the things we worked on where the same things Debi has been telling me. I will ride with her in my lesson tomorrow and compare notes I guess. I did find a way to work the splint and gloves for my broken finger today as well,...yay for that!

Poor pony is going to get a spa day after having two hard rides back-to-back.

Thanks to Dan for coming out to watch me ride!