challenging ride

Today I decided to ride Suri again. I lunged her for a bit (only a few minutes, the same as last times) and then got on. I was alone again, no lesson today. Then as I got up and sat and just got my stirrups on she all of a sudden took off! She gave me quite a scare because more then 3 years ago a different horse all of a sudden took off after I got on and then also bucked and threw me through the fence of the arena. I noticed I tensed up and pulled the reins too hard but I did get her stopped (she did not buck). I don't know what caused her to run. I made her walk a few circles but she was still uneasy. I decided to get off and lunge her some more. Here she started to test me, when I asked for walk she did a few steps an then trotted again and when I asked her to walk she stood halt. It was halt or trot for her so I needed to stay patient and focus and get her to listen and walk. When this was ok I noticed a friend mucking out the field so I asked her to hold the lungeline while I got on again. She stood still but in walk kept standing still or wanting to stand still. I dont know if she was reacting to me (I was not really nervous but mayby she still felt some nerves?) but I was able to be a bit more assertive and rode her for quite a while and asked ger to really focus on me and did lots of transitions, a lot of trotting and lots of different lines. She tried to evade the bit today so I had to really keep her focussed. It was a challenging ride but I am still positive because I think we ended it well and I got over my scare and did not let in influence (too much) the rest of our ride. I am still glad that thursday I will have another lesson to see how we are doing:)

Since everyone is talking about the weather, we've finally had some rain the last days (it was very welcome, the grass was going yellow). For the rest the weather is really sunny and warm, the Netherlands was the warmest country in Europe!!! I don't know if this ever happened before but we are sure enjoying it. We just had two weeks of'vacation so lots of time spent outside. I realise I am not writing or reading the blog as much as before since we had this great weather but I am definately bussy with the horses.

Jessica and Suri,
The Netherlands