Troxel Blog

I'm down to my last two weeks of lessons before my big show/competition! I swear it was just yesterday that I decided to embark on this little getting-over-my-fear-of-horses expedition.

This week I learned how to do an ordinary half circle. To give you a sense of how quickly I caught on to these ordinary half circles, I will share some comments my trainer said:

“That was a whole circle, Karisa;  we are working on half circles here.” “No, that was a figure eight.” “That looked like a half circle after a cocktail.” “What are you doing?” “Where are you going?”

…So I guess it took me a while to catch on to these ’ordinary’ half circles. I passed geometry with flying colors, so I didn’t think a half circle would be an issue.

After finally getting the hang of an ordinary half circle, I learned to canter for the first time. Cantering was another test of my

ability to do five things at once…kind of like patting your head while simultaneously rubbing your stomach and tap dancing. Piece of cake! We put the lunge line back on to deter Libby from ditching the lesson and heading for the hills.

To get the canter going, I basically had to do a sitting trot while squeezing my outside leg. I gracefully held onto the other reinfor dear life and prayed my hospital room would have a nice view.  Libby cantered for about five seconds, which was long enough for me to get the feel for cantering. I swear when you’re actually cantering it feels extremely fast and powerful, but when I watched it back on film and had to laugh; it was slow and pretty underwhelming. Although, at the end of the lesson, I did feel like I made it to a new level. Turns out I did, because at the end of the lesson my trainer handed me a Certificate of Achievement for successfully completing the introductory horsemanship riding level! I walked pretty tall after that! I signed up for the horse show/competition taking place in two weeks, which means I only have two more lessons to go until the big show!

How did you feel after cantering for the first time? Leave me a comment!