Dressage Lesson and a Thought

Our scheduled dressage lesson was yesterday. I wasn't able to make it out Monday, so I intentionally arrived about 2 hours before the lesson, turned Izzy out in the arena, then took her to one of the turnouts and let her graze for an hour. I figured that since she'd had a day off, she'd be wild and need all that.

Boy was I wrong.

She trotted and cantered in the indoor, but no galloping and bucking. She was very happy and relaxed in turnout, and when I went to ride, she was so ridiculously relaxed that I could hardly get her to go. At all. I guess it's good that she's always at her worst for lessons, since we get to work on more, but sometimes I wish she'd show how well we've been doing. Silly horses.

And of course, PAB (passive-agressive bitch, from my last post) was there to ride during my lesson. She was a little bit better to ride with this time, as she does know my instructor, but that meant she spent plenty of time watching me and commenting on Izzy to Cathy. It's fine, I guess, but it's annoying. I guess it's just that when I ride, I'm focused on me and my horse and staying out of the way, instead of trying to evaluate everyone around me and buddy up to the instructor.

Funny side note: PAB's horse has relatively crappy gaits. They are improving, but it's been a long, long road. So PAB says to Cathy, "Izzy has a pretty nice canter." Cathy, unaware that I want to hit PAB in the face regardless of what she says, answers, "She has three really nice gaits."

Har har har. Izzy win.

Basically, Cathy reminded me that I need to insist with Izzy and not let her get away with saying no to me. Ok. Be more aggressive. Check.

When we were done, I hopped off, pulled off Izzy's saddle and bridle, and put on her leather halter and her oh-so-pretty cooler. I left her pretty white boots on. I stopped on the way back to the barn to talk with another boarder, and a lady I'd never seen before came up. She introduced herself, explained she was an amateur photographer, and said she'd taken some pictures of Izzy. Then she asked if she could enter the pictures in a contest.

;-) I told her she could ONLY if she also emailed them to me, which she promptly promised to do.

Sometime soon, I may have some pretty pictures to post. Yay!

Ok, now the thought: in order to deal more effectively with PAB and her kind, I need to be more willing to assert myself. Part of the reason I don't usually do that is because I'm a really quiet person, and no one can ever hear me. Thus, I have resolved to work on projecting my voice to assist in my goal of being more assertive. Also, I need to be less naive and not totally floored when PAB acts like, well, a PAB.