Yesterday’s lesson was interesting in several ways. There was a slightly surprising change of horses, as we stayed with the circles theme, but I was still moved from Murphy to Fleur. This time of the year, though, she’s pretty good. Not as lazy as during the summer, and not as skittish and full of energy as when it gets really cold. Not that it was warm yesterday, especially not as we ended up riding in the paddock to have a lot of extra room. But after feeling chilly initially it ended up being quite refreshing, actually.
Almost as soon as I shortened the reins, I got an interesting reaction out of Fleur. She’s often either a bit long and low, or suffers from the bicycle-syndrome, where her head just goes up and she goes against the hand. Yesterday, she shortened herself without prompting, but without pushing her head up. Instead, her back came up. It felt like she was doing something right to me (possibly, she was a little behind the hand at times, which I’ve never experienced on her before), though I didn’t actually get a chance to ask our instructor since she ended up a bit caught up on some of other others. I definitely lack experience in telling when I am getting honest work or something else out of a horse, but it felt like she was trying hard.
The exercise, which we started right off and stayed with for the whole lesson, involved riding a square eight across the length of the paddock, and doing a circle on each side, making it eight in total for each lap. All circles except the one done when crossing the paddock were (of course) done in towards the centre of the paddock. The one done when crossing over the paddock could be done either way, depending on if we felt we wanted to correct a bad previous corner or prepare for the next corner (we were also supposed to work hard at riding good corners). We started at a walk, then mixed in some trotting, and finally some cantering.
Up until the first little break, Fleur worked very hard. Then something happened. After a walk on long reins, she was very resistant to get back into work, and felt much more like the usual Fleur. And when we started trotting again (now sitting down instead of riding a rising trot), she was really bad. I tried for a bit, and after seeing that she still did okay if I switched to a rising trot, I asked my instructor what I was doing wrong when sitting down. She asked me to analyze how I sat for the parts of the rising trot where I sat down, and it became apparent to me that I would sit down much more lightly than when I sit down in a sitting trot.
Fleur, it seems, is very sensetive to this. I don’t sit down particularly heavily, she noted, but Fleur basically needs you to sit extra lightly ... while, of course, still keeping a steady midsection. Quite a challenge (especially since I used to have a bad habit of using my seat too much, and on Fleur I do like a heavy seat just in case she starts going all skittish on me), but it made a big difference to her attitude. She also figured the unwillingness to work after the break was because she had worked so hard the first part of the lesson, and she was unused to doing so, especially in the paddock with the sand they have there.
Quite an enlightening lesson, I’d say, and I got in some good cantering too. I suspect I may get her again for some canter work, though I think next week was lateral work and I do hope I get Murphy for that.