Other than not being able to go out and eat or anything such, having my birthday fall on a Tuesday is very nice, since I get to go riding. That’s always a fabulous birthday present, and even more so when I get to ride Murphy. Though, he did end up worrying me a little, as he seemed to have a bit of a problem (which I will have to cover before getting into the lesson talk).
It started with him having to pee a while after we started riding, and my instructor thought he was standing oddly while he was peeing. He also peed an awful lot. Then, he ended up dropping three small piles of poop during the lesson, in addition to the somewhat larger up in the stables. I noted this to the instructor, wondering if he was having some kind of constipation issue, and she said she’d give him something after the lesson. He was fine during it, no oddities. Then, up in the stables, she gave him the medicine and thought she noticed an odd bulge on one side of his neck ... except he seemed to have it on the other side too, and it was hard to tell if it was just the angle of the neck or an actual issue. However, since he was eating and seemed perky, she wasn’t too concerned ... but of course I am a bit of a worrier.
What about the actual lesson, though? Much better than last week. We got to pick between continuing the same exercise and doing one that I felt sounded much easier to visualize, and we picked the latter. In fact, several of us had been confused last week, and she noted that we should have been more articulate, which is probably true. ;) However, which I also noted, some of the issues were things I realized afterwards.
Without having to worry so much about finding the right line, I could concentrate on the actual leg yield. The idea was again to do lots of them, to use it to loosen up the horses, and it sure worked on Murphy. At a walk, it felt as if got a lot shorter and with his weight further back. The leg yields weren’t always perfect, but they served the purpose of getting to his outside and shortening it. I often forget about it in lateral work, but now that I mostly remembered to keep tabs on it, it really brought him together.
The trot was still so-so, I don’t have it down well enough to handle leg yields at the trot except for a few steps here and there, though the trotting in-between the leg yields felt nicely engaged and I was able to ask for a little extra here and there. Riding without stirrups (I did this for much of last week too) definitely makes it easier to keep from pulling my legs up as I use them, though it does have some unfortunate side-effects in terms of bad chafing. ;P