Yesterday’s lesson was…exciting, courtesy of the temperature (-10). Most of the horses were on their toes and that definitely included Barka. I do get a bit nervous when a horse is tense and it feels like you’re sitting on top of the horse instead of sitting into it. That usually leads to me tensing up and then the horse tenses more and, well, bad feedback loop ensues. Add cold weather to that and you’re piling tension on top of tension. That said, it was Barka and so far my experience with her is that she doesn’t do anything too stupid. She has a pretty sensitive mouth and she certainly doesn’t seem inclined to do too much more than a bit of a bounce before she settles again. Fortunately, that turned out to be largely correct. We had a few incidents, including when cantering over a single rail on the ground apparently called for what felt like a rather substantial buck, but nothing that was a close call.
As for actual work, it was a bit spotty. A lot of my energy went into keeping Barka’s mind on the work and off, well, everything else. Some very nice trot from her again and more struggling with the canter transitions. Apparently she is also a bit too clever (and a mare, at that); they did a similar exercise yesterday and she picked up some bad habits from a single slip-up by that rider who at one point failed to keep her from joining the horses waiting in the middle instead of continuing down the length of the arena. As a result, she slammed the brakes on me a few times and refused to continue. Given how frisky she was, I had put my whip aside, which of course she took full advantage of. Mares.
Still, when we finished off with some trot at the end, she finally started lowering her form and breathing out audibly. You could just feel the tension melting away. That just took 60 minutes of work. I am hoping that if I jump her next week, she has done some more lessons earlier in the day. Though I am thinking not, she’s probably a bit too much for the lower groups to handle in winter.