Despite not riding yesterday (or perhaps because, since it always seems to wake me up), I was dead tired when I got back from the theory lesson and managed to completely forget about posting. So, it’ll have to be a quickie today, since I’ve got a Discovery show to subtitle. Of course, since it was a theory lesson, there’s less to report anyhow.
Though, we did get to try something I’d never done before: long reining. That is, you walk behind the horse with a pair of long reins and try to get it to do some useful work. This can be done either to prepare the horse for driving it or as a substitute for riding. Apparently they use it a bit at the riding school when exercising the smaller ponies that none of the instructors can ride.
Though, we did get to try something I’d never done before: long reining. That is, you walk behind the horse with a pair of long reins and try to get it to do some useful work. This can be done either to prepare the horse for driving it or as a substitute for riding. Apparently they use it a bit at the riding school when exercising the smaller ponies that none of the instructors can ride.
Our guinea pig was Sammy, who hadn’t been long reined for quite some time, it seemed. He was a bit puzzled at first, and he remained quite alert and attentive for most of the lesson. Of course, that didn’t mean he didn’t try all the usual evasive actions that he tries when you ride him as soon as he was asked to work. He’s a master at sneakily increasing his pace to get away from you, especially when you trot, and at pushing out one shoulder and drifting away sideways when you’re asking him to move straight ahead with his hindlegs following in the path of his front legs.
Our instructor did the warm-up, and then we all got to try it for a bit. It didn’t look so hard, but I suspected that it would be. I tried driving once ages ago, and it was a very strange feeling. This was much the same. Controlling the horse with those long reins and nothing else is very difficult. For example, keeping a good, even pace was very hard. If I walked at a normal walking pace, it was too slow for Sammy, and he started turning sideways because he thought I wanted him to circle me. If I walked at the pace he set, it was quite a brisk pace and I kept feeling how it increased all the time because he perceive me as asking him for more speed. Plus I got kind of dizzy for some reason (probably due to my eyesight; I don’t wear my glasses when I am at the stables and speeds can make me dizzy anyway) which made it tricky to concentrate.
Eventually, however, I found a sustainable pace, and I then tried to work him on a slacker rein for a while. By now he was quite warmed up, and he responded very well by coming forward and down with his head. We had talked about his neck muscles at the start, how he has the over-developed underside of a horse that likes to stick his head up too much, and during the lesson we were able to see very clearly the change in tension and visible size in the different muscles. So, it was quite an interesting exercise in several ways.