First Ride On Our Own

Saturday June 21 2008

Today I tacked up Drum and went for a ride around the paddock on my own. Mum hung around in the yard in case I needed a hand but Drum is so cruisy that it just felt natural to be out there riding him. We stopped to talk to Mum a couple of times and he was nappy about going out around the paddock again, as Ive mentioned previously, we'll fix this with practice.

I dont feel nervous at all about riding him anymore. When I was getting ready to mount up I was thinking about being nervous, and usually that would have been enough to stop me getting on but I just thought, hey, I can do this now. I know I can because Im a good enough rider and Drum is such a dude! Up I got and off I went. Even when he was nappy, I was just determined to get a good ride I growled at him and told him I was serious about him behaving. He isnt fussed about being told to pull his head in. We are getting to the point where he will trot as soon as I ask him and today he really jumped forward into a trot, I clutched the reins and slowed him down but realised as soon as I did it, that he wasnt being a prat, he was doing as I asked! So I praised him and just went with the flow.

He was a bit unenthusiastic today so I was having to really really ask him for a forward walk and our trotting with pathetic but we did enough to get a bit of a sweat on - both of us! We are still working out our steering but its not a huge issue. We changed reins plenty of times and did some firgure eights. Twice we did some nice leg yielding. I also remembered to look up, woohoo, and gave him plenty of rein. We did around 50minutes today and although it wasnt really exciting and something new, we still got some practice in and it was positive.

Things we need to work on: getting a good forward trot, working out our steering.