Lesson this Saturday...

This Saturday, I'm taking a lesson with my horse mentor, Marty Wernle. Marty is an older gentleman that I worked with about 3 years ago.

You see, I had ridden horses in my youth, but had no formal instruction at that time. I just bumped along and generally did well when I was paired with an experienced horse, but did terribly with my own mount, a very INexperienced horse. I have described my adventures with Marty in a previous post.

Needless to say, I am VERY excited to be going back with the man that helped me so much to improve my riding skills. I use MANY of the things he taught me every day in my riding. I have no idea why I waited so long to call him him and continue my education. I can only say that I was anxious to get out there and start DOING. But 5 horses and 3 years later, I think I need to go back to school.

Specifically, I have certain things I want him to teach me, and I want him to teach me how to teach my horse. I want to be able to do some basic spins, and rollbacks. I'm not sure all my horses will be able to pull this off, but I want to try.

Also, I want him to confirm that some of the things I THINK I do well, I am indeed doing properly. For example, I think I'm good at teaching a horse to yield hindquarters, depart on the correct lead, stop, back up, side-pass, and cross over in the front reasonably well. But I want to be able to REALLy have a horse corss over on their front end, REALLY do a good rollback, and at least do a decent spin.

And I want to hear some of his stories. He has a way of teaching where he gets his point across, and you learn something about the history of the horse in the process.

I can't wait to ride with him again...