Carson, the Wonder Horse

I can't believe that I, Vanessa Tuepker am about to do another animal post, but I am. I have done birds and nature and now, I'm about to do a post on horses. Of all things horses. I just can't believe that I am the Tuepker girl to be doing this. Well, here goes.

I take lessons at a stable, as many, okay all of you know. And while I'm there I ride this little thing called a horse, and well this particular horse is called Carson.

He's a strawberry roan, but to keep it simple we'll just call him a redhead. (He prefers that anyway)

On this particular day of riding, I was there alone, except for my faithful sidekick, Veronica, and I was working on Carson's transitions. You see, he has a tendency to be lazy, and that doesn't make for the best dressage horse. So Jeanette, my instructor, and I are working on getting him a little more unlazy. Part of this includes fixing up his transitions from one gait to another.

Carson does great going from a walk to a trot and back to a walk. Walking is his favorite though, especially if he can do it really slowly. The problem arises when I ask for a canter. He tends to go into it fine, but when we go back to the trot, he just loses control and falls out of it, limbs flailing and nose jutting out. It was this transition that I was working on. In a nutshell, this means getting his head in a good position, neck straight and shoulders supported, then ask for the transitions but don't let anything move. Sound easy? Believe me, it's not.

Here's Carson coming out of a canter...note the jutting head. tsk tsk

Here's what I want his head to look like....

....through all gaits. Not too easy. But he did it a couple times so that shows promise.

Also, I'm going to post a video of me riding! Just so you can get an idea of what it was like...a lot of stop and go.