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This was my second lesson in the hackmore and since the chiropractors visit. I had told my trainer that I had decided I just didn't have the time to devote to making Secret into any kind of show horse and I wanted to spend all of the time that I do have just enjoying riding. So, we've been working on riding on a loose rein nice and relaxed, teaching her to neck-rein, bending, and balancing.

First thing we worked on was an exercise to help with getting her to stop off of seat and voice as opposed to pulling back on her face. Basically we turned a tight circle until I felt like she was wanting to stop, then I relaxed my legs and seat and said "whoa". Again, this might sound crazy-rita, but its working. At the very end of the lesson I cantered her a few laps and when I wanted to stop I just relaxed and said "whoa"... didn't even have to move my hands, she just stopped. Awesome! Homework is ten of these circles in each direction.

The next thing was working on actually getting her to bend. We did bigger (10-15meter) circles trying to get her to bend around my inside leg. So, I had to keep weight on my inside leg, move my outside leg back, turn my upper body pretty much all the way around without dropping either shoulder, and then micro-manage her -- moving her off first one leg then the other -- all the way around the turn. We did this for probably 30minutes and my legs were killing me!!! But, by the end she was actually bending really nicely, so that's homework too!

We ended the lesson with some canter work. We had done our trot work outside in the big arena, but I'm still too scared to canter out there. I had asked my trainer to get on and canter her outside, which she did, and we concurred that she is still too bouncy and pulls a little too much near the gate for me to go for it out there yet. So,we moved back into the smaller indoor arena for canter work. It was actually really nice! She is picking up on the transition cues right away now, instead of 8-10 strides away. She's still bouncy, but getting better I think. My trainer had recommended sitting a "half-seat", which is basically just forward in the saddle with ~70% of your weight in your stirrups... it's like half-way between full seat and two-point. I felt like I moved and bounced more, but since most of my weight was in the stirrup I wasn't really slamming down on her back. It was actually alot more secure for me and I wasn't as scared. We only worked in the counter-clockwise direction, Secret's good direction, but the last canter was "perfect" (a direct quote from my trainer!) right down to the "whoa". So we decided to end on a really good note!