Last week of canter-work, and another week with Gamir. He gave away a little secret this time. He dislikes being saddled, and will often snap and kick when the girth is tightened. That is, if you do it in the stable or in the arena. But today we ended up waiting outside the arena for a bit, so I tightened the girth there. Gamir stayed still with his ears forward all the time. Its interesting how tied to specific situations and/or places that sort of behaviour can be.
The lesson itself was so-so. The plan was to work on counter-cantering, so we started by riding a diamond-shaped pattern. On the tighter turns we kept the horses bent the right way around the turn, but on the wider turns we rode them counter-bent. The idea was to get good control over each shoulder, and to prepare for going into a counter-canter.
At the walk, it worked quite well. Gamir was pretty supple, and after a reminder about getting the bend and flexion through properly and getting him to walk on with a bit more energy, it felt as if it went pretty well. He certainly ended up nicely together, packed into a nice, square package. Once we started trotting, though, I just couldn’t get his front end to connect with his back end, and getting the counter-bending was hopeless.
After a bit, our instructor suggested I try cantering instead. Gamir tends to limber up better that way, and get through his back a bit better. It did improve, though mostly she had me working on my own legs during the canter. I keep tensing up whenever I use my legs, so she had me swinging my lower leg back and forth to make sure the bend at the knee wasn’t too fixed in place. But even with that I was finding it very hard not to get my leg to be all stiff as soon as I used it.
Once everyone else was done with the trotting, we moved on to the actual counter-cantering. Gamir is well-schooled, so actually getting it was easy (well, except for me confusing lef and right easily ;P). Maintaining it worked fairly well too, so I was able to focus on the quality of the canter as well. Again he came together pretty well, so I guess the overall result was decent. But I could definitely use a private lesson or two soon, if I can manage to find a time for it.