So, it seems I’ll be riding Heddvig for a while. I have to see if I can drag Elio along to take some pictures of her at some point, because its hard to do the little black tank justice with a description.
Its certainly an interesting experience to ride her instead of Murphy, and its a lot of fun even if its hard to get the same satisfaction as when Murphy does really well simply because Heddvig doesn’t have the training or the strength to respond quite so well. But its still quite satisfying to see her progress.
This week, we work on cantering…and doing so while the others trotted. This was, on the whole, a little too difficult for Heddvig. She did show during the jumping that she can slow her canter down, but when she doesn’t have obstacles to think about her instinct is to run into the canter and then keep running because otherwise she feels she doesn’t have the strength to keep it up. I am sort of wondering if one could improve her canter in general by jumping her quite a lot. Of course, it has improved since she got to the stables, and in particular she’s getting better at taking the cues for canter a little more quickly.
On the whole—apart from the bit where my fingers almost froze off—I enjoyed it, but I do hope that a few weeks of riding Heddvig will let me get a hang on how to get her to run less and work more. She definitely has potential, and a fun attitude. As well as a lot of attitude, sometimes.