Murphy turned out to be his usual charming self this Tuesday, so whatever it was that bothered him last week it was nothing major. Which is always a relief for a worrier like me. :) He was even perky enough to sink his teeth into my coat while I was getting him ready, so definitely his usual, feisty self. He did look slightly apologetic about that, though, but nothing like good old Sammy (now a happy retiree together with another former riding school horse), who would look downright ashamed if he ever managed to actually hit anyone when snapping with his teeth.
Murphy was also quite perky during the lesson itself. He had rested for a while (might just have done one lesson earlier in the done), and it was also rather cold, so I had plenty of energy to work with. This turned out to be very useful, as the focus of the lesson was using lateral movement to do a flying change. Not a flying change in the “correctly done dressage movement” sense, but a flying change in the “necessary part of jumping a course” sense. The idea was to get it done, not to worry about the style too much. As our instructor noted, these are riding school horses. They don’t do perfect flying changes.
Especially not Murphy, who has a slightly ... ground-hugging canter.
The exercise that we used was one where four poles were placed on the ground; the first across our path, the next two alongside our path, and the last across our path. To start with, we were supposed to turn down the centre line, ride across the first one, ride “outside” of the second one (keeping the pole between us and the long side we had just left) and the move the horse laterally to get the third pole on our other side before finally crossing over the last one. We did this at a walk and a trot down the centre line, and it went a lot better than I had expected. I did have to tap Murphy lightly with the whip to get enough lateral movement, but I kept from any pushing and shoving, and overall he responded well.
We then moved to doing it diagonally, and at a canter. We’d come in at one canter, move them laterally between pole two and three, and ideally they’d change either during the lateral movement or with the aid of the final pole which created a little jump for them. Ideally.
While I got a surprisingly energized canter, which felt much less flat than usual, I still couldn’t quite get it right the first two times. Murphy, who has a very good balance, had no problem taking the corner following the diagonal at the wrong canter, so didn’t seem to see a great need to change. But I also hampered him a bit, by not being soft enough on the inner rein. Again, a case of instructions not getting through to me until they were changed a bit. When she told me to soften up on the right rein, I think I did the opposite because she called my attention to the right rein. When she said to think as if I was moving him up against the left rein ... sudden change. I held the left rein steady, and gave him the cue to move laterally against it. And he changed.
Not immediately, but more easily than I thought he could. Actually, he had in fact done one other change before as well, as I was sorting him out after one of the failed attempts, and I could really feel a difference in how much lighter he was on his feet on the whole. So, a good feeling, and a good reminder.