First Lesson on New Horse Knight

A text message from my trainer greeted me when I checked my phone during lunch yesterday.

“I want to tell you how much I LOVE your horse. He is so lovely to handle and been great through me treating scratches on his hind legs (which is almost gone!) I am so happy you chose him!”

My trainer is Knight’s second biggest fan. I’m his number one fan (of the human variety). Last night at the end of my first riding lesson with my new horse, a teenager on a cute palomino mare rode over to talk to my trainer. The mare who stood about six feet away from Knight and me was totally checking Knight out.

“She won’t move!” the girl said.

“She likes him,” my trainer responded.

Knight seemed not to notice at first, but as the three of us kept talking about the budding romance, he turned his lead slightly left, I think to acknowledge his new admirer.

At the hitching post. I don’t know if he’s been trained to tie, but he’s been great so far!

“I think he’s going to be really fancy once we get some weight and muscle on him. And we pull his mane,” my trainer chirped.

I feel kind of bad that my new horse is wearing a hand-me-down faded blue halter and I have to keep borrowing a hoof pick and curry comb. I delayed buying horse gear because I honestly thought that this whole horse search was going to continue on for a few more months. Guess who’s going shopping this weekend!

The lesson went pretty well. One of the most exciting parts of the lesson was that when two small bunnies came bouncing through the arena about 20 feet ahead of us, there was no excitement. My previous TB would have come unglued. I continue to marvel at the totally calm demeanor of my new mount. 🙂

Because I’ve only been riding once a week as I’ve been horseless, I feel like I don’t have the ability to be as subtle with my aids as I would like, and my timing is a little off. For example, when I tried to slow his forward canter a teeny bit by sitting a little heavier for a “whoa,” he broke to a trot.

I think I mentioned before his canter is glorious. So smooth and consistent! And he picks up his leads no problem. (Sooo glad things didn’t work out with the chestnut horse!)

Our grand finale for our lesson was trotting a large figure of eight over a set of two poles set up in between jump standards. I wish I could say we were awesome, but in reality, he was a big wiggly.

Besides having more concise aids with appropriate timing, I have to work on riding multi-tasking. I was so focused on keeping Knight’s tempo consistent and having him approach the poles straight, that I was surprised when my trainer told me we were way too close to the left standard.

After we got it all together at once: good pace, straight, through the center, we ended our 50 minutes with a pat and and a loose rein. And an adoring palomino mare.

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