It seems our instructor has once again remembered her notion about putting me on horses other than Murphy for a while, as he was in our lesson today but she put me on Fleur. Given that its not so cold any longer (though it was still quite windy today), I don’t really mind, though she is a bit less interesting to ride than Murphy. Still, given my problems the last few dressage lessons on Murphy, some variety is probably a good idea.
Fleur is in many ways Murphy’s opposite. She’s not much taller, but she’s long-legged and dainty, with quite a bit of thoroughbred in her. She’s also really flighty and spoke-prone. Her energy level is directly related to the temperature. The colder it is, the more hyperactive she gets, and the warmer it gets, the lazier she gets. At this time of the year, she’s probably at her best. Enough momentum to work with, but she’s still able to concentrate on her rider instead of everything else around her.
We got off to a pretty good start, where I managed almost at once to get her very long neck under control. She likes to either stick her head up in the air and hollow out her back, or to drop her head and neck down like a bloodhound. I used to have a lot of problems with her, but it does seem like my riding has improved overall because I was able to ride her much more effectively than before. Even when we started trotting I was able to keep her head from coming up too much, and later on I even started feeling a fair improvement in her trot. And given that she takes short, pony-like strides, getting any sort of power and suspension into her gaits is fairly hard.
We continued to focus on softness on the inside. Today the goal was to prepare for doing a small circle at the start of each long side of the arena, and to leave that circle with the horse remaining soft, bent and with flexion at the neck. Basically, we’d be doing a haunches in down the long side, and then we were also supposed to try for a few lateral steps, making it a half pass.
Fleur did pretty well with the circles, the softness and the haunches in, but getting lateral movement while keeping her like that was easier said than done. She’s not very good at easier lateral movements either, though eventually I realized that switching my whip to my outer hand might be a good idea, and this helped a bit. My instructor didn’t comment too much on my riding today, probably because it was actually fairly good, because what she did say was that I was riding her quite correctly, just not asking for the lateral movement firmly enough.
Overall, I was fairly pleased too. I was able to get some very nice haunches in work from her and towards the end she trotted along quite nicely, with a bit of extra springiness to her strides. I suspect I’ll get her for the next few weeks, and it’ll be good practice, though she’s not quite so exciting to ride since the results you can get when she does well aren’t so dramatic. And I do hope I will be back on Murphy for the jumping lessons, especially if they’re in the paddock.