Lesson one done, one million to go ...

Well I had my first schooling lesson with the new instructor I found and the whole thing can be summed up in two statements - 1) the new teacher is brilliant and 2) Sam and I have a very long way to go!

To cover the instructor first - it turns out I made an inspired choice when I picked her details from the BHS website. She is an advanced eventer and most of her horses are ex-racehorses so she knows exactly where Sam and I are coming from and (more importantly) where we are trying to get to. She has a brilliant approach to thoroughbreds / ex-racers which is to treat them like small children. Her opinion is that as they are smarter and sharper than the average horse you have to respond to them the same way you would a small person. So in a nutshell ... when they behave well you praise lavishly, but when they throw a tantrum you don't respond (although this was easier said than done when Sam threw a fit in a corner of the school and tried to jump the fence!). The focus is all on giving them solid boundaries to work with - she believes when they play up it is usually because they lack confidence so giving them boundaries gives them this confidence to work with you.

With regards to the lesson itself - Sam played the ex-racer role fully and spent most of the first half throwing tantrums and generally making it clear that the whole thing was totally beneath him. You can see from the photos below he wasn't amused!

However, after much persaverance by the instructor and much ignoring of being hurled around the school by me we did start to get somewhere. The teacher worked us for a while with her holding the reins to show him how he should be holding his head (you can see this below). By the end of the lesson he seemed to have come round to what we were after and dropped his head quite significantly - indeed he looked a different horse. I would have liked to have shown you the result by the end but sadly my official photographer (boyfriend) got bored by half way through the lesson and went home! I may have to find someone slightly more willing for my next lesson (which is next week)...