dres·sage
Noun
The art of riding and training a horse in a manner that develops obedience, flexibility, and balance.
Last weekend I took the plunge and had my first dressage lesson with a German riding instructor from Missouri named Heidi.
Saturday I was able to watch Heidi work with a horse and a few of her students before having my own lesson. It was nice to see how she interacted with her students. On Saturday I rode Dexter. Dexter was originality trained in Western Pleasure so Heidi thought I would be more familiar with his gaits.
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| Online with Dexter |
Heidi started me off online with Dexter. This was nice as it gave Heidi a chance to assess my riding skills (or lack there of) and gave me a chance to get used to Dexter without worrying about steering. After going through all of the gaits online and having Heidi give me some pointers on how to correct my position she finally turned us loose for a little offline work prior to ending the session.
Sunday I was able to ride Freely. Freely is a "Premium" Oldenburg mare that was exported from Germany 4 years ago. Freely is a 3rd level dressage mare and was quite the change after riding Dexter!
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| Heidi and Freely |
Again we started online so I could get used to Freely's movements. Freely felt quite a bit different from Dexter and very different from my little ponies! After working online Heidi again turned me loose and tried to teach me how to do leg yields.
The saddle wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It actually felt similar to my CA saddle w/o all of the extra leather.
