The lesson this Tuesday was one of those magical moments, or magical 45 minutes. I got to pick between Murphy and Nelson, so of course my special darling won. Nelson was mightily jealous when I was getting Murphy ready, and there was something about Murphy that told me he was in a good mood.
That was proven as soon as I took the reins (and, in fact, even when I was just walking him on a long rein before that, he felt positive), and Murphy promptly started chewing contentedly on the bit and getting in between my legs and hands. I knew I was in for a treat then, because while he can be good when you persuade him that yes, you really do need to work this lesson and not just be a lazy riding school horse, it can’t compare with when he says “oh, work! love it!”.
I am not sure the lesson on Tuesday came out all that great, all considered, since the two things I remember the most are two mildly unfortunate incidents. One was my fault, the other I can only blame Nelson for.
A rather wet week got in the way of our plans of jumping out in the field, since it would have been much too slippery. Too bad, I had really been looking forward to a chance for a bit of lightly eventing-inspired jumping. I haven’t done that since my riding holidays in England and Wales…which now is too many years ago for me to even start counting. It would just make me feel terribly old, not to mention make me crotchety about how long it was since I was on a riding holiday. I really miss them, but at the same time, I am not sure it would feel at all the same now. I want someplace where I get to act like a horse-mad teenager who is really excited to have her “own” horse or pony for a week, and I am not sure there are any places like that who take people older than 18. ;P
Anyway, we did get to jump, but in the paddock instead. Murphy must have been disappointed about the change too, because he felt a bit sluggish through much of the lesson. This, of course, gave me another opportunity to practice being a) decisive in my riding from the start but b) not too over-active and pushy. Ulrika tried to make sure I worked on getting longer strides from Murphy rather than a higher frequency of strides, which just leaves the poor uncoordinated fellow all tangled up in his own legs. I also had to work a bit on my lower legs, which kept slipping back when asking for more engagement while cantering. That, of course, tipped my upper body forward, completely counter-acting that I was trying to raise his head up a bit and then ride him forward into that more upwards and open form.
The actual jumping went fairly well, though coming in a a trot always makes my timing suck. It wasn’t until the end, though, that Murphy really got into things and gave me something to work with. But then it felt quite good, and he seemed rather pleased too. It was also fun watching Hedvig jump; despite being a sturdy, short-legged draft horse, she tucks her legs in lightning fast when jumping. Very good technique from her, overall.
Since there won’t be much in the way of shows for a good while, I am going to try to improve my reporting from other activities in Ringo’s life. Given that its so far been next to non-existent, improving it a little bit shouldn’t be so hard. ;)
Today we finally got around to doing some proper tracking for the first time in a good while. In the past, we’ve stuck almost entirely to letting Ringo look for various toys, but now we got some proper wooden markers. We also fixed up some clothespins with ribbons on so we’d know where we had gone, and we put down two tracks. One straight line with one of the markers at the end, and one angled line with one marker before and one marker after the bend.
A little mishap led to Ringo running back and grabbing one of the markers from the second track right off, but at least he grabbed it and came running with it. Then we went off picking mushrooms—or, well, looking for mushrooms, anyway—and returned about an hour and a half later. Ringo was a bit stressed and not very focused, but even so he found the second marker on the track that was supposed to have two (but where he had already nabbed one) quite easily. The best part was that he grabbed it right off, without any prompting from me. Looks like teaching him how to indicate the markers won’t be too hard.
The second track he picked up well on his own, and followed fairly well. He also went right for the marker as he found it, though didn’t pick it up right off. But he marked it clearly, and took it as soon as he was asked to. Overall, I am quite pleased, since its been a while. Someone who knew what they were doing could easily get him ready to compete ... of course, I don’t. ;) But we’ll try to work in a more focused way on both the tracking and obedience this fall.
Not much to report from this weeks lesson, since it was theory time. It was intended as a preparatory lesson for a later theory, which will be turned into a sort of clinic with our instructors riding various horses. I think we ended up a bit off-topic, though. We’re a rather chatty bunch.
I had a pretty excellent ride on Murphy yesterday. I was determined to be decisive from the start, and he seemed to be pretty happy to go along with that. I also tried to keep in mind my shoulders, but I think they kept coming forward a bit much.
We spent most of the lesson riding 10-meter circles, first at a walk and then mixing walk and trot and canter. Murphy definitely likes to throw out his shoulder in circles, but I managed to focus fairly well on controlling his outside. I probably fiddled a bit too much with my hands to get the inside soft, though he’s not really a horse that is bothered by it. Still, a bad habit.
Once we started mixing in some trot, Ulrika (the instructor) felt that I wasn’t asking him to be quick enough with the transitions and that I was instead asking him to lengthen once at the trot. Given that his coordination is so bad, he tends to just fall apart if he lengthens too much when he’s not quite ready. So better to work on getting him to react more quickly, and that will help him focus on his coordination and also get more energy into the trot. What she did like was my seat, which she again felt was steadier and more confident, and I also kept it the same through the transitions.
Mixing in a bit of canter was a little harder, but towards the end I did ask him twice for a 10-meter circle at a canter, and he almost managed the second time, so he was definitely nicely warmed up by then. Which he also demonstrated as we finished up with some rising trot and he gave me some nicely balanced trot, engaged at the back and soft in the front. And he definitely looked happy when we finished.
Last Sunday was the Swedish Championships for Boxers, which we attended with Ringo, for the third year in a row. Fortunately, it was close to where we live this time around, just an hour away instead of four, so the fact that the show didn’t turn out so well didn’t sting quite as much as it could have.
Going into it, we were prepared for a less than stellar result, as the judge was one that had given Ringo just a 2 for quality at a previous show. But that was when he was a junior, and he did not show well at all, so we had thought that might have accounted for some of the evaluation. But, no. He showed very well this time, giving the judge a good chance to look him over, and all that resulted in was another 2 and a longer description of all his faults according to the judge:
Three years old, medium size. A bit flat in skull, not fullfilled enough under eyes, too much developed jaws, the ears are not well carried. Short neck, not dry enough. Needs more angular in front, a bit loose in elbows, chest is not deep enough, could have better topline. A bit feminine. Correct croup and tailset. Good mover. Needs better expression.
Some of those things were clearly due to the judge preferring quite massive male boxers. His winner was very muscular and deep-chested—too much so for my taste, really. Though taken with the previous show, I can’t help but worry a little bit that his head is coming out a little worse with age. But oh well, its just a show, and if we could get him into the working dogs class I think he’d be quite competitive all considered. That’s no small feat, though, with his habit of getting stressed by everything.
And speaking of stress… It was incredibly windy at the show (but despite lots of foreboding dark clouds, we only got 5-10 minutes of light rain), and it blew all sense out of Ringo. He was wild and loud (a poor fellow standing behind us got barked at several times, I suspect for having a beard…), taking only short little naps. I really thought he’d be out of control in the ring, but he was excellent. Now, we if could only work on his escalating issues with other dogs, to improve those as much as his attention to me has improved…
As we always try do at the end of each spring semester and the start of each autumn semester, we exchanged the arena for a little trek in the nearby woods today. Of course, one of the horses half threw a shoe, so we made it a short version and got back to finish up with a few minutes of riding in the paddock. Murphy enjoyed the outdoors part quite a lot (the little pig tries to snatch up food even when he’s trotting, and ends up slapping branches in my face), and then promptly fell asleep once we got into the paddock. However, I wasn’t about to have any of that, and firmly told him to get working. Which he did, offering me some rather nice trot and some decent canter. I’ll have to keep that in mind for my next dressage lesson: its all well and good to warm the horse up properly, but most of the time I ask for way too little until too late into the lesson.
Well, my back is definitely telling me that the autumn semester at the riding school started this week, and that Tuesday’s lesson was the first for a few weeks for me. I am not quite sure how I managed to make those particular areas of my back so sore, however. Possibly I was tensing muscles I don’t normally use to compensate for my lower back being a bit week after a 12-hour car trip on Monday. But either way, its good to be back in the saddle.
For the first lesson, I was put on Fleur, and while we kept to fairly basic exercises we certainly didn’t laze about. Most of the lesson was spent focusing on maintaining a rhythm but shortening or lengthening strides. Fleur has a naturally steady rhythm, but not a lot of scope, though she actually moved quite well towards the end.
At the start, she went into bicycle mode for a bit, with her head up and her back down. She’s getting on in years, so I allowed her some time to warm up, and of course I ended up being a little slow to then start putting some demands on her once she was ready. As usual. But after a reminder from Ulrika to ask for quicker reactions from Fleur, she responded quite nicely.
I had some issues towards the end, when we were cantering and trotting and she got a little too eager. I always end up shortening her too much in those scenarios, and since I didn’t have my usual riding pants on, I was feeling like my seat was less steady than usual. That made me even more inclined to hold her back rather than ride her forward, as I ought to. But on the whole, I was pleased with how I worked through most of the issues. Ulrika thought my seat was pretty confident on the whole, so maybe the extra training during the summer has helped some. Though I need to keep working on getting my shoulders back without tensing and pulling myself up out of the saddle.
After two weeks of vacationing, with plenty of walks and visits to the beach, it was time to finish off our time up at my mother’s family home near Sundsvall (on the Baltic coast, pretty much right in the middle of Sweden length-wise) with a visit to this region’s boxer special. We had taken our vacation later than usual to be able to attend this show for once, since its generally one of the smaller breed-specific shows. We were also quite interested in seeing what the judge, a well-known Swedish boxer judge, would have to say about Ringo.
While the spring semester at the riding school ended two weeks ago, the group that I ride in had agreed on having a extra three-day course as past of the various summer courses and holiday camps offered at the stables. So, we were booked in to ride Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Of course, it turned into just Monday and Wednesday for me, since the Pet Shop Boys just had to schedule their first concert in Gothenburg for ages and ages for Tuesday.
Yesterday was our final lesson of the semester, but in two weeks we’re having a three-day evening course. However, it has turned into just a two-day course for me, as Elio and I are going to a Pet Shop Boys concert one of the days. Given that the last opportunity I had to see them at a proper concert was 1991 or so, I decided I could miss the ponies for one evening. Stupid timing, though.
The lesson yesterday wasn’t much of a lesson, as such, since the other half of the group did their dressage tests. That meant the rest of us rode without supervision, and as I was placed on Heddvig instead of Murphy I was at a bit of a loss as to what to train. So, it turned out to be pretty light on work, though I did try to use some basic exercises just to make her more relaxed before I tried some cantering. She’s still having issues getting into canter, and holding it for long, but she’s improving and she’s certainly fun to ride.
Afterwards, I chatted with Ulrika a bit about the possibility of doing a private lesson focused on riding a dressage test, and she thought that was a good idea. So, that’s on the menu for next semester, if I’ve got some spare money for extra riding.
Mixed results with my dressage test on Tuesday. I had a couple of things I wanted to focus on, and I managed with some of them, but not others. And a few things went rather worse than I had thought, but I somehow always manage to be overly optimistic in the middle of being nervous and pessimistic.
We started off with about half an hour of warm-up on our own, and I guess I didn’t use that time as efficiently as I could have. When 99% of your riding is done for an instructor, it can be really hard to be on your own. I tried to practice some of the things I knew would be troublesome, but while I managed to sort out a few potential problems (like making sure Murphy would continue to think forward even without a whip, since I don’t ride with spurs), I didn’t manage to do a very cohesive warm-up and I didn’t manage to get him really working before it was time for me to go in.
The good parts about the actual test was that I managed not to stress through it. I am often so focused on the next part (or, when jumping, on the next jump), that I constantly push forward. This leads to sloppy lines and to me doing too much with my legs, my hands and my upper body. For the most part, I stayed calm. I rode careful corners, and the only point where I got a little over-active was the canter circles. The rest of the canter I sat through quite calmly, though, and even the transitions too canter were calm. It definitely help that Murphy enjoys being alone in the arena and automatically is more forward-going.
The bad parts had a lot to do with the canter, though. Specifically, the canter circles and the half-turns in reverse at a canter. Murphy’s canter is not good. Its very hard to collect it without him dropping down to a trot without a lot of focused canter-work before hand, and I didn’t want to tire him out during the warm-up. So, the circles turned into gigantic ovals, and on the turns he was nowhere near the intended line. I really lost control over his outside, and I could certainly have demanded a bit more of him there. But my focus was elsewhere.
So, pleased that I didn’t rush it, but I have a long way to go in terms of making sure I can do more than one thing at a time.
Yesterday’s show was a minor disaster. I was very nervous in advance (not helped along by all sorts of bad omens ;P), because last time we had had this judge Ringo had been such a monster towards me that she had been concerned she had to report him for aggression. Still, she really liked his type, and I wanted to see what she’d think now that he appears to have grown out of the few faults she pointed out last time. Given how nicely he behaved last weekend, I thought we stood a good chance of a fine performance.
Hah.
For our last jumping lesson, we had talked about jumping out in one of the fields were we have some obstacles setup. However, it was threatening to rain and our instructor—who from now on will be known as Ulrika or Ulle, because its easier to type ;P—also wasn’t certain that some of the horses might not be a little too frisky. So, we put that off for the autumn. Instead, we jumped a series of four obstacles, with one stride between 1 and 2, one between 2 and 3 and two between 3 and 4.
Mostly Ulrika wanted us to do it in as uncomplicated a way as possible, with good drive forward. Most people were asked to come in at a trot, but for me and Murphy she asked for canter right off. Its easier for him, and I also get less pushy that way. Even so, I did get a little too active on some occasions, but after she’d told me to jump the series once and then gallop him around the paddock once before coming onto the jumps again, I definitely had him charged up enough that I could relax. He even changed canter on me at one point. Not something I asked for, but he usually has nowhere near the canter to be able to do that.
And yes, I avoided doing any sharp corners. ;P I did, however, try to keep in mind the comments from the competition, so I tried to work on keeping my legs in the same position over the jumps. Other than that, there wasn’t too much for me to work on once I had the “hands off” approach down. Murphy got the distances sorted out after one attempt, though he did keep knocking down the second jump for no good reason other than laziness, since he cleared the higher and broader jumps after that with no problem.
When we returned to the stables, he stopped a little oddly as he got in there. He does that now and then, and Ulrika saw it and explained that he seems to have some slight vision issue. Specifically, when going from light to dark or vice versa, he takes longer than most horses to readjust. But it doesn’t seem to affect anything else, though perhaps he is a little nearsighted or farsighted since he can get stuck looking at things for a long time. He never spooks, he just studies them with curiosity. I think that also has to do with a total lack of survival instincts. ;P