Today was not a particularly good day in terms of my riding at least. I was back on Fleur, and unfortunately she showed the same tendencies that she showed last time outdoors towards easily getting tense and stressed. And since today’s exercise involved mixing trotting and cantering with the transition in a more or less fixed location, she ended up getting very rushy every time we neared that spot. Add to that a new horse that ended up shying as he got too close to Fleur, thereby scaring the silly little girl, and there was plenty for my nerves to get rattled by.
Most of the time, I simply couldn’t get myself to sit back down and ride her, I just kept curling up and leaning forward, with a cramped grip on reins that I kept way too short. She did canter fairly well—really well for being Fleur, actually, whenever we got onto a circle, but that was because she slowed down a bit then, which immediately relaxed me a bit so that I sat down properly and gave her some more rein. But as soon as she had a straight stretch ahead of her, she tensed up and put her head up. And if there’s anything I can’t stand, its a horse that feels tense. I can deal with lively or strong as long as the horse doesn’t feel tense. Sammy, for example, gets really charged up by these exercises too, but he doesn’t get tense. With Fleur, and some others, the tension makes it feel as if I am sitting ‘on top’ of them rather than ‘in’ them. Which logically makes no sense, but that’s the sensation I get. I feel like I could get tossed off at any moment.
So, not good. I really ought to ride her again next week, but I am not sure it will do much good now. Gamir would be nice, if she doesn’t want to put me on Murphy again. He can also get tense, but usually I can work it through on him, so that might be a good one to tackle. I am getting really bothered again by the lack of horses that I can ride, though, and everything new that they buy is either too small or too big. We haven’t had a new mid-sized (150-160 cm) horse for a very long while.