Spring is here again (it made a quick visit a while ago), so today we ended up riding in the paddock. Which I had nothing against since I was put back on Murphy. Partially, it seems, because Nelson is currently taking less weight due to some problems, though hopefully that’s a temporary thing. Either way, I was very interested in seeing if the last two weeks good lessons on Fleur and Nelson would make any difference for me on Murphy.
As it turned out, something certainly had changed. At first, he felt unusually sluggish, especially considering that we were outdoors. However, since he certainly wasn’t sluggish later on, I think it may have been the slightly moist sand in the paddock that tricked me, since it changes his gaits a lot compared to how he moves in the indoor arena. In any case, once we were past the warm-up and started trotting, he felt quite co-operative right from the start.
We stuck to the same exercise throughout the whole lesson. At each corner, we did a circle, and we alternated as much as possible between walk and trot. I tried to keep in mind how well transitions has worked before on Murphy to make sure I did as many of them as I could fit in. I could probably have done more than I ended up doing, but what I did still seemed to have a pretty good effect on him. Of course, doing all those circles helped too, as it made sure I focused on getting his inner shoulder into his body, without letting his outer shoulder drift away.
I still had some issues with my lower legs, but despite not going shorter than usual with my stirrups, I was able to keep my legs fairly stretched out for most of the time. A few reminders at the start about not pulling my knee up whenever I applied my leg, and about keeping my position upright, managed to keep me working on that for most of the lesson. I caught myself not quite keeping my outer leg properly applied, or the inner rein held firmly enough, on a few occasions, and the fact that I was able to notice these problems on my own was certainly an improvement. On the whole, my hands were also not as busy as last time I rode Murphy.
By the time we started adding some canter work, I was already pretty happy with his trot, but the canter really helped iron out a few lingering issues. First off, it perked him up quite a bit, so I had more energy to work with. Secondly, it really made me pay attention to his outside, since it needs to be kept tightly under control for the canter transitions to work at all.
The canter itself never quite got to be very good, though I did manage some pretty good transitions (the slightly heavier ground seemed to make it more difficult than usual for him to get his legs moving just right), and it certainly had quite an effect on his trot. Having to really get him between my hands and legs in preparation for the transitions gave me a much better trot. And when we finished off with a few large serpentines across the arena, he was very supple and flexible, easily adjusting to being bent first one way and then the other.
Overall, I was quite pleased. I guess it shows that I do need to switch horses at times, especially when I get stuck on a certain issue. Hopefully, Nelson will be available for me soon again, as I don’t much like riding Fleur outside. Still, I did put her down as choice number three for the competition we’re having (I signed up for both the dressage and the jumping). Number one was Murphy, of course, and I put Nelson as number two, in case he’s back to carrying my weight range by then. Now I just need to find the dressage program we’re supposed to be doing. I need to do plenty of memorizing. ;P