practicing steering

Yesterday I had another riding lesson with Suri and it was lots of fun! We did lots of simple but effective and fun steering exercises to see how good my steering really was! We had two pool noodles on blocks to steer in between and later over them (as step overs) and I rode zig zag between a row of cones and I had 4 cones in a square 5 meters apart to practice doing a circle within these cones. All sounds really simple and usually you also ride these kind of lines but it's amazing how the effect is of these simple 'tools' to show you that your steering is not always perfect yet:) Riding the circle within the cones was not possible at the beginning of the lesson but after some warming up it was really simple. If I did not have the cones I would ride a bigger circle in the beginning without realising how big exactly because I ride in the field and don't have the arena with the letters as guidelines. The same for the zig zag, the cones just helped to show me that we need some more fine tuning of the steering. Stepping over and between the pool noodles was easy for Suri, I had practiced this in hand first a few days ago. I was very pleased with the lesson and everytime I see improvement on how we are doing. I added some pictures below of the riding and the step overs and also of my new saddle (the iceland saddle).

My new saddle (notice the comfy seat:)

trot, still working on balance but she is very relaxed

The step overs

Jessica and Suri

The Netherlands