A Good Lesson

Riding lessons were interesting last night. I rode CJ, who was fit and frisky and evidently hadn’t been out since the day before. He’s a pretty little bay, but short-legged, hard-mouthed (as so many of the lesson horses are, alas), and willful.

CJ wanted to run. He has a lovely slow trot when he cares to use it, but a bad habit of speeding up every time any of the instructors, in either arena, says anything at all. When he gets to going, those short little legs are just a blur, and it’s pretty bouncy. His canter is fine, but he kept speeding it up, and when I’d finally get him stopped and trotting again, he would try again to canter every time anyone spoke, or a horse went by, or a cosmic ray hit him….

It was a battle, but actually, in retrospect, probably a very important lesson: I had control of him. He did not run off with me, he did trot when I told him that was his job, and he walked when I told him to. Not without argument, but he walked.