Desert in half-pass with my concentration face!

At the beginning of April I spent a few days with Anna Jantscher and her horses in Bavaria. After helping with all the mucking out each morning we worked some of the young horses she has in for starting. I watched her teach several different lessons over the few days, some to the owners of the horses she has in for training and some on external yards to people on their own horses, luckily my German is still good enough to understand most of the lessons! Anna gave me an in-hand lesson with her pony Desert on the first day and I was able to practise what we had done in the lesson for the following few days. Desert is a great schoolmaster in-hand and it was fantastic to have the more advanced work refreshed in my mind.

Anna also gave me a lunge lesson everyday on her lovely lunge horse Nico, really focusing on working just with my seat and changing the trot with seat aids only. I have always found lunge lessons to be very helpful, both as a rider and as a teacher, no matter what level of rider you are as they give you a chance to really focus on what you are doing and can improve a riders seat immensely. We also found time for an evening hack through the pretty Bavarian forest.

As always it was great to see Anna and have her very knowledgeable help and advice for a few days. She will be back over here at the beginning of May to give another clinic and I am really looking forward to a few more lessons as well as watching her teach many others.