Forget Me Not - Free Rein [Pin]

3 ☆

When she was ready, she led Major towards the arena and put her hat on her head along with her gloves on her hands, and on her way there she grabbed a long whip. Normally, she wouldn't use it but if she didn't have one in her hand, the horse would become a little lazy and back off of her leg – especially school horses.

Sam was already waiting for her in the arena, "if you're all set just hop on and start warming up. Major won't be any trouble for you."

Willow made sure that her stirrups were the right length and that her girth was tight enough for now and hopped onto Major's back using the mounting block. She did the girth up one more hole before she set off in a walk to let Major stretch himself out before the real work began.

"Have you ever competed before?" Sam asked as Willow changed the rein with Major as you needed to work evenly on both reins.

"Not yet, but I've trained horses to a competitive level and done a lot of typical competition heights and dressage tests."

Sam continued to assess the way that Willow warmed Major up, she noted that it was a perfectly neutral warmup to a horse that she didn't know, and when the girl came across a problem, like stiffness, she would put an exercise in to counter that, "that's good, you could do the County Show with us, try-outs are in a week and a bit."

The next question that Willow practically burst out of her chest, "would I be able to compete Bumble?" She was even more eager to get onto the mare.

Sam laughed, "let's not jump the gun here, I want to get a really good scope of you with her before I let you on her."

Rather begrudgingly, Willow dropped the subject and continued her warmup of major. She pushed him into a canter and did a few circles on each rein, and once while she was going past the gate, she saw Pin stood there. When the boy looked up, Willow gave him a quick wink with a teasing smile on her face.

His laughter followed her ears a little as she cantered away from him. Willow did a few trot and canter transitions so that Major was responsive to her commands and leg. Sam asked her to do a few lateral exercises, like leg yield and shoulder-in – Major tried his best, but he wasn't made for dressage.

It was easy to forget that Pin was there watching Willow work Major, as Willow was so determined to show Sam that she could handle her own enough for the woman to let her on Bumble soon. It wasn't as if Bumble wasn't trained, she just didn't really let anyone on her back anymore, or anywhere near her for that matter. But Willow was set to bring around change in the mare, no matter how many times the horse would chuck her off.

Later into the lesson, Sam was satisfied with what she had seen of Willow in the flat, so she set up a small course of jumps – just to make sure that all of Willow's claims were true about her jumping too. Major was excited to jump after the hard work of a flat session; he went over each jump with a flick of his tail which made Willow giggle lightly each time. Sam upped the height a few times and played around with the order of the jumps until she was satisfied with Willow's ability.

While Willow cooled Major down, long reins and her feet out of the stirrups as the girl was quite tired herself, Sam spoke to her again, "I don't want you hopping on her straight away, if you've broken in horses you should be able to handle anything she throws at you in the school."

"So?" Willow beamed at the instructor, "when can I ride her?"

Sam sighed in bemusement and amusement, "I want to work on a few hours lunging for her with you, then you can take her out on a hack to get started as she truly acts up in the school."

Willow hopped off of Major's back as she considered the words, it wasn't an unfair deal and she was going to hack the mare to start with anyways. Sam continued speaking as Willow rolled up her stirrups and loosened Major's girth, "once I am happy with the way you two work together, you can ride her. It likely won't take more than a week."