I was much too tired to post last night about the first of the regular lessons for the semester, and since I am still kind of sluggish (plus I’ve got three Meerkat Manor episodes to subtitle for Animal Planet), this will probably turn out a bit briefer than usual.
That’s not to say, however, that it wasn’t an interesting lesson. First, there was the dreaded weigh-in, which went well. However, since there was quite few of us (some people had probably missed the change in starting time), a lot of horses got to sit (err, stand) this one out. So, I ended up with Fleur. This time of the year I am okay with riding her in the outdoor arena, because warm weather makes her rather laid-back and not very skittish, though this time there was another, unexpected problem. Fleur, you see, would not have passed a weigh-in herself. In fact, she looks like she’ll drop a pair of foals any moment, and sitting on her felt a little like sitting on a barrel. Add to that an overly-polished saddle (darn kids ;P) and a pair of old breeches without the fully lined legs and seat I have become accustomed to and you have a recipe for an unsteady seat.
The focus of the lesson was lengthening and shortening our horse’s strides at all gaits and to do so while maintaining a steady pace. Since there was just five of us and we were in the large paddock, we were allowed to individually ride as we pleased in regards to paths, directions and gaits. Its always useful to do a bit of that, to get used to working on your own and to get used to keeping an eye out for other riders.
Fleur does not have a great range in terms of her movements, and lengthening in particular is really hard to do without her just getting rushed. I wasn’t quite sure how to tackle the problem, but first my instructor suggested a lot of curved paths to make sure that I’d be able to get and maintain flexion of the neck and a soft inside. I ended up riding quite a few serpentines at a walk, and then when I moved onto trotting I found that she was moving forward quite well. My instructor then suggested that I focus first on going back and forth between her normal stride and a shorter stride before asking her to lengthen her stride. This worked beautifully. After shortening her for a while, I was able to give her more rein without her just lengthening her rather long neck, and she managed a quite fluid and (for her) extended trot. It was certainly the best trot I’ve had out of her before.
The canter, on the other hand, didn’t work so well. All of a sudden I started slipping around the saddle like crazy and I ended up holding too much onto the inner rein. This resulted in a short, bouncy canter, which of course was even harder to sit. With some effort, I did manage to balance myself well enough to soften up on the inner rein, but then she got a little spooked by something and again I got a bit clingy. Final verdict: no more experimenting with the old breeches, so I definitely have to buy a pair of lighter-coloured and more light-weight breeches for warm weather. Other than that, a pretty good lesson, though I am sore in uncomfortable ways today from the saddle being deformed by her chunkiness.