Oh my!! Dan was a monster today! We had our lesson with Rana. We warmed up and had a fairly decent trot half pass. So then we went right to the canter. Our plan was to work on getting sit and jump in the canter. And maybe work on counter canter. So... we started and it escalated super quickly! I don't know if Dan was in a mood... if I was, but... it was a battle! We probably fought for a good solid 20 minutes. He threw everything at me. He just would NOT canter like a proper dressage horse. And heaven forbid if I finally got an actual canter, I tried to half halt. He was bolting, bucking, propping, stopping, crow hopping, kicking out, and just flat out refusing. And everything I tried to do to correct it... he'd come up with another evasion. Sigh...
We finally finished our lesson with me getting somewhat of a semblance of a canter with him being on the bit and through and soft and while not collected, at least not running. Sigh. I was exhausted! We did have a laugh though that thank goodness I owned him because he would have just eaten someone else alive! At one point I had to kick my stirrups off because my toe kept getting smooshed, so it was more comfortable. It was more comfortable to ride out the bucks, leaps, and kicks... Heathen!
Oh well. You win some, you lose some. Hopefully I at least was able to get through to him and prove that I wasn't going to allow him to not do it. I understood it was hard and I understood he didn't really want to work that hard, but... "no" is not an acceptable answer. "I'll try" and "I'm trying but I can't" are acceptable answers, but... "Nope" and "not even gonna try" are not acceptable answers. Sigh.... Who was it that said Dan's "yes ma'am" was broken?! ha!
So the plan is to come back Thursday so that Rana can help make sure I don't back down. No more giving up the connection when he's a jerk and threatens me.
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