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.