I got reacquainted with an old friend this week; Nelson. He’s a sturdy grey pony, with a nice square build, and tons of energy. Very hard-working, sometimes so much that he ends up with muscle strains. As a result of that, he ends up set to carry lower weights only quite often, which is why I haven’t had a chance to ride him in a while. Nelson is also a very cheeky pony who, unlike Murphy, does not beg politely. He’ll nip and push, so he needs to be told that such bullying gets him nowhere. Mostly he’s pretty sweet, though.
It was somewhat coincidental that I had ended up on Nelson since one of the other instructors had been the one to list which horses needed to be used, but he was perfectly suited to the exercise we did. Basically, lots and lots of canter transitions, and unlike Murphy and (so far) Hedvig, Nelson has a pretty fabulous canter. In fact, its probably his best gait. His walk is a little rushed, and in the trot he’s very hard to keep off the forehand, but the canter is nice and round, with a good amount of energy and a steadiness that is just perfect for working on your seat with.
In fact, after she had seen me canter him a few times, she said she would definitely have to let me ride him more often, because it was perfect for making sure I keep working on sitting very still in the canter.
The first transitions he did came easily, though he ended up very rushed when we went back down to a trot, so I had to work on actually bringing him to a halt each time to get him to respect those aids as well as he was respecting the cue to canter. Of course, that and the fact that I started asking for more collecting in the transitions too canter made him rethink how fun it was to canter since it actually became more work. So, for a bit he ended up not taking the cues to canter as well, though once we had a talk about that he gave me some very nice transitions followed by some really nice canter (so balanced that I could pretty much leave the reins alone entirely, which is a very sharp difference from his trot), and some pretty decent downwards transitions too. Definitely a fun and useful lesson.