June 9 - Bob Rides Mercury

Bob is an amazing rider. He's so still - everything is still - and then everything moves in harmony. It is just so fluid.
He rode Mercury today - a real challenge. Last week after the jumping lesson and the head tossing and the new hole in the flash, I rode Mercury on Sunday. I don't remember it being particularly exciting, but I was trying to be careful until I had another lesson. Little did I know that fate would conspire to keep me from creating more bad habits by drowning me in work all week.
So Bob got to ride Mercury today after a week of no riding at all (not even lunging), and with his new bad attitude. Of course, Mercury looked better (at his worst) under Bob than he ever does with me. Bob said he has really severe problems bending to the left, and that he breaks because he feels unbalanced. He is also naughty and tested Bob frequently.
What Bob said he needs is to be ridden consistently so that he feels secure - so that he knows he can go 10 laps around the arena (into the corners, not racing around with his nose out) and know that it's ok - he doesn't fall down when he comes out of the corner.
Bob said we're getting stuck because I'm not patient (and don't know how to fix this stuff anyway), and Mercury is "green" for all practical purposes. He said he'd put it at 60% Mercury's fault and 40% my fault.
Tomorrow I'm going to take a lesson, but I suspect that I can't replicate what Bob was doing today because I simply don't know enough. And I am guessing that the next two weeks I am going to continue to log an extra 30-40 hours each week. So I'm going to ask Bob to do a month of training (until after my week off in July), I'll take a couple lessons and watch whenever I can, and then the Happ's Derby (scheduled now), Bob can ride Saturday and I'll ride Sunday. I don't know if that's allowed.
Otherwise, I don't know if I'll be ready to take him to the Derby (almost certainly not) and maybe not even the shows after that.
As much as I want to know how to fix every problem, the thing is I'm never going to be good enough to be a trainer. That's what trainers are for.