Looks like last week’s lesson post was misplaced. Together with this weeks its a good example of ups and downs.
I rode Heddvig for dressage last week and afterwards I felt better about it than I have had for a while. We worked a lot on a slightly smaller rectangle than usual and (as always) I found that not having the wall right there on one side really makes me pay attention to my outside aids. Now if I could only get that into my head when the wall is there, too. The main exercise other than that was riding the horse into a halt and then creating a distinct inner side so that we could control which front leg the horse would start moving on. We then tried to take that with us to canter transitions, and I think I managed to be pretty decisive but not too over-active in the transitions this time.
Today, then, I jumped Nelson. The weather (we’re having a bit of a surprise snow storm—almost got it for my birthday again, like when we snowed in some 15 years ago) made him very lively and since I don’t use the help reins when jumping, he pretty much stuck his head straight up and rushed on. I thought my arms would fall out after 10 minutes or so.
Once we started jumping it did improve a bit, since his canter is better than his trot, but by then my brain was kind of scrambled from trying desperately for the first half of the lesson to figure out how on earth to get him to listen to me. I think the way he moved rattled my head too much. ;P