Shmeeg
New User
HI All, I am just returning to riding after a 20 year break as my 5yo daughter has just started riding. My Sister and I (who has just started riding for the 1st time) all go along to the lessons and I am finding it loads of fun and very rewarding, especially watching the little one come on. (We live in Scotland and go to a local riding school which has great horses and excellent instructors). I am currently in London on business and decided to take a lesson at a well known riding school for something to do in the evening and had an awful experience with an extremely unresponsive horse and an absolutely awful instructor. I have ridden a lot of horses over the years when I was younger and have not had much trouble getting back into it apart from not being very fit!!. The horse that I rode tonight absolutely would not canter, and when I used the crop, the instructor told me that I was being cruel and that I was not giving the aids correctly otherwise the horse would canter straight away. I tried fruitlessly for 15 minutes to get it to canter, taking all the "advice" she gave which was totally useless. In the end I was completely out of breath and finished the lesson on a very low note, only to have the horse try to bite me!! I feel like I completely wasted my money and I know that my aids to canter have worked on every other horse including the ones I have been riding at the local riding school, maybe needing to use a crop occasionally on a lazy horse, but normally only once during a lesson. Has anyone else had an experience like this? Should I complain and ask for a free lesson with a different horse and instructor - is it acceptable to ask for a more forward going horse so that I can concentrate on improving my seat and riding skills?
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