28 Jan 2008 - Pondering aloud... Am I strange?

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm strange or not because I take lessons on school horses and prefer to ride Pinto by myself.

I know my RI has commented to a friend what she doesn't know why I don't ride Pinto in lessons as I can 'handle' the other horses, even a couple of tricky ones, and Pinto is better than them??!!

But for me, it is different. I find Pinto very challenging to ride in group lessons, he gets excited very easily, and I seem to spend half the lesson trying to calm him down, rather than concentrating on the exercises. It got to the point where I would dread my lessons, because I found them so difficult... Pinto picked up on this and got more and more argumentative during the lessons.

After the summer break last year I decided that I would just have lessons on school horses, mainly to bolster my courage a bit, ultimately though I need to improve my riding so I can ride Pinto better, rather than trying to school him and figure something out myself at t same time.

In the mean time, Pinto and I have been having an absolutely fab time just hacking. My confidence is growing (check out my other thread from today!), and I know Pinto so much prefers hacking than schooling.

But everyone else at the yard has lessons on their own horse... it's beginning to make me feel, well, a bit of a cop out.

Am I strange for not really wanting to have lessons on Pinto? Having said that I am having a whale of a time (mostly) having lessons on the school horses... and if I could get private lessons I would have them on Pinto. I just feel that group lessons and Pinto just don't mix very well for me!