I'm a bad riding student

***This is my 5th lesson with Susanne and the 2nd time she's seen me ride in an arena.***

Lately I've been realizing I'm not an easy student to teach riding to. But in some ways I think I'm a good student.

The bad: I just flat out argued with Susanne today when she corrected my hand position yet again. She keeps saying my outside hand is crossing over the horse's neck. Every time she does, I look down and note where my hand is - *not* crossing over. So I'm getting fed up with that. Finally today I said, "Come look at where my hand is. This is as far "over" as it goes and it's not over the mane at all. It's adjacent to the mane." She put her hand there and said, "Yes, over the mane." I immediately realized her definition of "over" is different from mine. I had to defend myself, "So you mean *almost over* or *too close to the mane*." I can take advice, I just don't like being falsely accused, which is what it felt like. She doesn't want my outside hand anywhere near the mane. Got it.

Also, we almost got into an argument about changing whip hands. For the first time ever (?) I carried a crop because Mag is often behind my leg. I didn't use it, but had it there and whacked my stirrup a couple times (ok that's using it). She said she wasn't going to enforce that I switch whip hands when I switch directions. I said, "Good because in dressage you don't change your whip hand because you're pretty much constantly changing directions." She disagreed and said in the lower levels you do, and in the upper levels you only wear spurs and no whip so it's not an issue. What? Is that true?  She went on to say how important changing your whip hand is because 1. Some horses will look at the whip and that changes how they carry themselves and 2. You need the whip to be backing up your inside leg, not your outside leg. 

The good: I will always take what an instructor says literally and do what they ask. If they say more leg, I'm gonna show a clear difference in the amount of leg. If they want me to use my seat bones differently, my head position, I often give exaggerrated reactions to these requests.

The confusing: She told me to ride inside leg to outside rein, which is very good, but she told me a couple times to loosen my inside rein. So I let it go completely and had a really nice circle with my horse's head facing outside the circle. (Which is a Western riding exercise.)

In my attempt to do exactly as told, I was even starting to go sideways.

Now this entire time I was riding Abteiling with Ani (following her and repeating her patterns/exercises). Except I kept it at a walk cuz I have arena trauma.

Arena trauma: Susanne, "Get out on the rail! You're riding the 2nd Hufschlag (2nd hoof-track?)!" I said, "I'm not riding the rail today." Bad student. I just flat out refused, for half the arena anyway, to go on the rail, after seeing Mag spook a few times in our lunging.

He was much better than the last times at TPs arena on the lunge line, he didn't flip out completely or try to drag me today. But those spooks were settled in my mind and I was not going near those spots. Sometimes I wonder if Susanne remembers my #1 goal: to ride with less fear. Oh well. Maybe now she remembers.

Did you know there are two official methods for leg yielding? 1: Bend the horse's nose to the rail and ride along the rail with the horse's body at an angle. 2: My way: Keep the horse mostly straight and ride from the quarter line to the rail, diagonally (slight bend away from the direction of travel). I was very confused about this until I looked it up recently. It surprises me that two different movements can have the same exact designation, but oh well. So when Ani did her rail type leg yield, I did my diagonal one. Susanne didn't expect that at all and said my first few steps were fine but then I lost it.

Funny. She aske us both to halt and back. We did and then I second guessed myself and thought she wanted more steps, so I asked again. Oh maybe she wanted more? So I did it again. Three sets of 3 steps, and I had to laugh cuz Mag did a big C shape in total, unable to do that straight.

When S told me how bad that was I said, "So, how many steps did you ask for?" She said, "I didn't."

I said, "Well can you please say a number next time?" Geez.

She laughed, "You are so ENGLISH!"

(Later J told me I used the wrong word for number. Apparently there are two words for number in Germany - one that means number and one that means counting number. That was bound to come up at some point *lol*)

Finally she asked us to do THREE steps of rein back (she said, "as the dressage riders do, we're not going to do Western and go clear across the arena backwards").

Here's how it went. Mag backed up 4 steps, very nicely done, but 4. This is when I realize how often I override my horse. Rudi did 3. Basically Rudi did everything right today and I did very little right, but hey, as the time went on, I realized I wasn't anxious. I was so focused on changing how I rode, I didn't have the opportunity.

At the beginning of the lesson, I had one objective. I wanted to start to teach Mag true contact. He gets it a little, but not consistently and certainly doesn't know how to seek the rider's hand. That's what I wanted to do. I remember my Seattle dressage trainer would start out each horse at a standstill, just take the reins and release when the horse gives. Susanne said you best teach this at a trot, it's easier.

Then she said we must first achieve rhythm and relaxation. I replied, "OK so we're not ready yet."

In the end I realized (on my own) that you are allowed to touch the inside rein on the circle, just don't hold it as steady as the outside rein. Would have been nice to hear it from her.

Afterwards I told them I wouldn't be having lessons for the next 3 months because of going back to medic school. Bad timing because I made a lot of mental progress today. I'll try to keep this one good arena experience in mind until Autumn.

I'm still hiding indoors from the heat. Good thing I've got lots of studying to do.