You live and learn and then get . . . lessons!

Surfing the internet one day, I came across an ad for someone offering lessons. I was especially intrigued because she offered saddleseat lessons. Since I took my very first lessons as a 7 year old on 16 hand Saddlebreds, I was feeling the itch to pick up where I had left off.

It was clear when I started that it had been a long while since my organized riding days. I had basically spent the last 10 years dinking around in my backyard or riding complete greenies. I had only taken about one year of real lessons, and it was about 16 years previous. Everything else I knew, I had "perfected" on my own. I felt very out of control and all over the place on that flat saddle.

Cute Lesson Teacher didn't have a "real" saddleseat horse, but she did have a very high energy little Arab mare named Tina that she used. Tina had to be ridden in a martingale due to the fact that she zoomed around at Mach 10 with her nose in the air. She was very speedy and very fussy. At my first lesson, CLT asked me to canter Tina. I was like, "Ummm . . . I have serious canter fear issues, like that's the whole reason I'm here."

She gave me a look that said, "clearly you are hedging, canter now please."

I nudged Ever-Ready Tina into a canter, and we went flying down the long side. I instantly tensed up freaked out and all but dropped the reins. My butt was flying waaaay out of the saddle, and I was terrified. CLT was yelling, "Sit back!! Relax!!" as Tina zoomed down to the corner, almost smashed into the wall, veered around the corner, and came to a shaky halt. The halt wasn't the only shaky thing.

I was whimpering and feeling generally defeated. CLT just had me go back to trot work. Then she expained we would work on centered riding, and really developing a nice secure seat.

As my lessons prgressed, CLT transitioned me more into dressage as that was where her focus was at the time. As my confidence grew, she had me riding the new horses she got in on consignment to sell. She would tell me, "You'll really like this one, he's got a nice trot and a great canter." I stopped asking her if every horse had a tendency to buck. I started to relax more. I felt very proud when she told me I have great hands.

I had just gotten Tina to bring her nose down and in and travel in a reasonably nice frame. CLT gave me the greatest compliment when she told me Tina went better, prettier, and slower for me than anyone. She asked me to ride Coach, her old fart lesson horse and try to slow down his canter. She used him for the little kid lessons, and he liked to lean into your hands and really bull along at a high speed canter.

I followed her to three different barns, and when she told me she was moving out of state, I was devastated. I had learned so much about balance and to be more confident and more solid in my seat. Her dressage technique was definitely more German-style push/pull, lots of left-right and worrying about headset. I definitely learned bad habits. But I needed the confidence-building and the good solid horsey friendship she provided. I needed to ride horses other than Sammy, horses I could trust. Horses I didn't have a history with. I needed someone to confide in, someone who didn't criticize me for my fear or make me feel incompetent. Our lessons were laidback. A lot of times, she would just saddle up and ride alongside me. Once or twice, she came out and met my Sammy and gave me a lesson on him and rode him a bit herself. She was what I needed at the time and I learned a ton.

I took all of that back to my Sammy. One day, I put my western saddle on him, with a halter on under his bridle. I looped a leadrope around the saddle horn so he couldn't drop his head as easily, and I asked him to canter. I didn't attempt to steer him or push at all. I just sat and let him canter as he pleased. We went down the middle of the arena and stopped. And I threw my arms around his neck and cried a little bit. Cried with a big, idiot grin on my face. It had been 3 long years, but we had made it. I was riding my horse W/T/C again. Things were looking up!

Not that everything was instantly better from that day. I got bucked off another time or two, but things were definitely improving. I was riding in a bitless bridle now and back in a better fitting English saddle, first a saddleseat saddle and then a Wintec dressage saddle (at $500, the most expensive saddle I had ever owned). I had lost my trainer, but I was light years ahead of where I had been. So we just putzed along, doing the things I had been taught by the CLT. We never really progressed that far, but we were doing much better than we had been, less eruptions, less battles of will.

We are now up to about 2006 and the first lameness. Oh boy, the lameness chronicles!