Cavaletti Group

This morning I woke up early at 5am to feed the horses. I wanted to be sure Ben had enough time to eat all his breakfast before I went riding this morning. I took him to Barnabee today for the 9am Cavaletti Group. It was lots of fun!! Sike (on Danni), Pam (on Freckles), and Jo (Marque) were also in the lesson. It was the first time that I've ridden Ben in a group lesson and the first time that we've worked over cavaletti's together. Ben did really well over the walk and trot pole and even stretched his neck forward and down to allow himself to balance better. The purpose of riding over cavaletti's is to work on your tempo and rhythm and help your horse to trot and walk more evenly. It was a great exercise and we both learned a lot!!

At the end of the lesson though, Ben had had enough and started to get scared when everyone was working on the full cavaletti course. There were three parts to the course: two trot sequences along the long sides of the arena with 4 poles each. One set was spread further out than the other to allow the horses to take larger strides. The other part of the course was set up on a corner and required you to work on your horse's bending while traveling over the poles. When all of the horses were traveling around the arena over the course at the same time it started to spook Ben since at times the horses' feet would knock the poles and make noises. It was all a little too much stimulation for Ben and he started jumping around and acting a bit wild. So Ulla suggested us to just trot in a circle at one end of the arena away from the other riders and work on swing turns. That seemed to help calm down Ben a bit. Then when the lesson was over and the other 3 horses left the arena, Ulla had me work Ben by myself a little more. In the end Ben was calm again, so we ended on a good note. Even though we had a little mishap and Ben freaked out a little, I am very proud of how well he did and will definitely try to attend the Cavaletti Group again the next time I am here early on a Saturday morning.