Lesson with Yvonne

Took Tom for his monthly lesson yesterday and drove up in glorious sunshine until I stopped to have a cup of tea as I was running very early, the heavens opened and the wind got up but luckily it stopped as I drew up at the house.

I have put a plan of what was set up at the bottom but when we started the seesaw was facing the other way and we started by doing a loop of jump, seesaw, jump, tunnel, jump, weaves (the guides were only for the entry and exit) I've been finding that he will do the seesaw really well for the first attempt and will run to the end and wait but seems to loose confidence when doing it again so we didn't push it and a bit later went back to holding it up and letting it down slowly, this really helped and I'm hoping he will get over his nervousness and as there is no rush I wont be forcing him to do something he is unsure of.

We went on to doing snakes and pull throughs and Yvonne was keen for me to use directional commands and to start sending him on over things rather than running right up to things like I have to with Dudley so made me stay on the red dotted line as much as possible. The plan was that by doing this he would turn tighter and I have to say it really worked. Once he got the idea of pull throughs (coming in through the gap rather that going over the next jump) he was coming so tight I'm sure he was leaving hair on the wings.

I have got to stop repeating the command as when I was saying "left, left" he was doing exactly what I was asking and rather than doing the snake he was coming through to me. This goes back to the not 'chatting' to him while doing the course so he only hears what I need him to do rather than just my voice constantly.

We went on to this one.

I was supposed to only say the command once and try and stay on the line, needless to say I went into repeat mode and had him coming to me on more that one occasion!! By now he had got the hang of 'in' and at number 6 he came round the wing and over number 7 on just one word. The tunnel caused a bit of a problem to start with as when he came out he could see the jump straight ahead and kept popping over it until I remembered to say 'left' as he was in the tunnel and when I said 'left, up' he knew exactly what I wanted and shot up the A frame.

Trying to get an hours lesson written up is quite hard so I hope I haven't bored you and it makes sense.