Some brief thoughts (because I am exhausted after the dog show today) on this Tuesday’s lesson. It was very cold, but after getting the size sorted on my winter shoes from Mountain Horse, they did a great job of keeping my feet alive. My thighs kind of died a bit, though, and my fingers died several times over. Of course, on a few occasions I found myself with my fingers frozen stiff and Murphy seemingly liking it. I guess I did fiddle a little much with the reins in some exercises, and once that stopped (because my fingers froze ;P) he became more supple and relaxed.
It was just three of us (some were probably on holidays, others stayed at home for the cold), so we got quite the workout. We warmed up working on two circles, and then we moved to an exercise where we turned in as if to ride across the arena, but then went into a tight circle to the left which led into a shoulder in on the line across the arena and which was concluded with another circle to the left. Murphy ended up quite nice and supple, and then went into “look, no spine” mode, so I had to work a lot on not overbending him. He also ended up a little too curled up for a while, but stretched out quite well once asked to, so ob the whole he was a pleasure to ride. The best results in terms of the shoulder in came when I skipped the circles and just went straight into it, so Ulrika suggested that next time we do this, I should ride a less fiddly exercise, especially on Murphy.