I had another lesson I really enjoyed this last Tuesday. Rather than working on a specific element from the dressage program, it was all about basic obedience. We basically spent the lesson starting and stopping, and as always such simple, single-minded exercises get surprising results. It can really work very well to break things down into smaller, more bite-sized pieces.
For me, the exercise was a good way of making sure Murphy really did respond to any cues to go forward, and it was also the kind of work during which it was fairly easy for me to mind my hands without over-complicating the issue. Of course, when I thought I had Murphy responding promptly, my instructor still ended up telling me he needed to react more promptly. So, we upped the demands a little Murphy, and he complied nicely.
When the time came for a bit of cantering during the latter half of the lesson, he actually gave me a pretty round canter. At least for a ground-crawling Irish mix of a bit of this and that, that is. ;) However, because we had done so much starting and stopping, I wasn’t able to collect the canter very well as any use of the reins had him thinking (no doubt, a lot of it was wishful thinking) that it was time to stop. Clearly, I needed a lot more leg on him, but for a horse with such a poor canter it is no wonder he chooses to be “too” obedient about stopping/slowing down after a whole lesson of such work.
Towards the very end, I also ran into another issue resulting from the emphasis on impulsion. Like the last few weeks, he was not about to stop running once it was time to jog him in a lower form. Nope, he had been wound up, and he was going to keep going. Very similar to good old Sammy.
Murphy was, on the whole, more pleased with life, so I think things are settling down in the herd again. Hedvig is not quite fitting in just yet, but she probably will soon enough. I hope I’ll get a chance to try her sometime this semester, though for now I am happy to keep working on Murphy.