The bad news: I didn’t get Murphy this week. I got Fleur, and it was extremely windy and unseasonably cold outside, so she was a bit tense and so was I.
The good news: Murphy’s fine, but he and a bunch of the other horses had some therapeutic massage on Monday, so no hard work for them for a few days. I did okay on managing my nerves on Fleur, though I paid the price afterwards for being on a horse for an hour and a half in a cold wind and jumping while a bit tense. My back was kind of screwy and I felt a bit weird. So, that’s not so good, though I am still pleased I managed to avoid shutting down when my nerves acted up.
The jumping consisted of lots of turns. Since we had a double-length lesson, we had setup a mini course, with five low jumps along one side and then an M-shaped series of four jumps on the other. We did things like weaving between the five jumps and jumping every other obstacle as well as jumping on a curved line and in a figure eight shape.
My two main issues with Fleur both relate to her canter, which is terrible. Its very short and very bouncy, going more up and down than forward. Often, it feels to me like she’s going a lot faster than she is because of the quickness of the stride. I also get a bit unnerved by how her head comes up in a rather tense way. So, I have a habit of holding her back too much, which if course leads to more bouncing.
When jumping, her canter (unless I do ride her properly forward) makes it hard for me to judge when she’s going to take off and I also end up taking her back too much after each jump. For much of the lesson, I didn’t quite realize what I was doing wrong, but the final series of jumping we did I really tried to just get her to gallop on better and got some nice jumps out of it. And that was after she had shied away from something and spooked me, so I am really glad I didn’t give up at that point.
So, not a comfortable ride in parts, but good anyway. I know I wouldn’t be able to handle much more than this, but a little testing of my limits is okay I guess. A little.