Balance

Banner has been mine for almost a full 2 months now, and I have been loving every single moment with him. He is incredibly versatile, but so gentle at the same time. He is bringing a joy to riding that I haven't felt in years, if ever. He is easily the most trained horse out of my 3 and is always game for trying new things.

Like riding tackless for the first time.
And then letting me stand up on him - no big deal.

I am definitely still learning how to ride him though. He is a big, huge tattletale on me when I shift or change. He will cruise along at the canter as long as I ask him to, but if I take my leg off, he breaks. We are working on our counter canter (with trainer help), and he swaps leads if I shift my weight by an ounce. He is forgiving and awesome over fences and is teaching me a lot, but he requires a correct ride!

*photos are just from a random home ride, not our lesson*

In order to try to improve my own riding and give him the ride that he deserves, I have decided to get us into a weekly lesson! The best part is that the trainer we are working with rode him a lot last year, and has a really good idea of his training, his strengths, and his weaknesses. He can have a tendency over fences to get lazy with his front end, and he also drifts to the right.

So our last lesson consisted of working on straightening him up on the flat, which we used the counter canter to help (and WOW did it make a difference!), and then over fences, we did giant crossrails - the kind where she put the cup at around 4'6" on each side and the center of the crossrail was about 2'3" in the middle, but got really high really quickly if we didn't stay at the center!

Our straightness improved 10x from the beginning to the end of the lesson. Also, since Banner is a bit more trained than my other couple of horses, Trainer C had me work on "helping" him a bit less. I'm used to a green horse that I have to help a bit more, but with him, I need to let him do his job, and me focus on my job more. But I still need to support him, and I'm working on finding that balance. The first time I didn't help him through our grid (xrail - one stride - xrail oxer - xrail), we definitely crashed our way through the entire thing. 

I can't just drop him and expect him to do the whole thing for me, but I need to support him without micromanaging. It has been a difficult balance for me to find, but I am getting better (I think!). I think as we get more and more familiar with each other, we are going to be a really good team!

I've got some big, lofty goals with Banner which include making it to my first real, registered event next year! Banner is the horse that really can take me to big shows and let me have a good, confident ride. I'm super excited with my future with him. I've just got to keep improving my half of the partnership to get us there!!