I am not sure the lesson on Tuesday came out all that great, all considered, since the two things I remember the most are two mildly unfortunate incidents. One was my fault, the other I can only blame Nelson for.
I may have noted before that he is a very pushy and mouthy pony. He wants to be the center of attention (when I am grooming Murphy, Nelson is often standing with his head over the wall between the stalls, trying to get some attention), he gets bored really easily and his manners leave much to be desired. He’s one horse I am very firm about not giving treats from my hand, its always given in his feeder.
However, that didn’t save me this week. I had barely started grooming him before he grabbed the elastic cord at the waist of my coat, and pulled it out as far as he could (impressively far, actually ;P). Concerned that it would break, I reached for it to get him to let go. Unfortunately, he did. It snapped right against the nail on my thumb. Paaaaaaain.
Not a great start, though by the time we got to riding, I could feel my thumb again. Obedience was the subject of the lesson, and initially I found myself with a very heavy load in my hands as Nelson happily allowed me to carry him around. Ulrika then insisted that I needed to be much firmer about getting him to respond when asked to slow down or stop. So, she had me do a few halts from trot, with some backing up afterwards.
Eventually, he did start listening a bit more, though I never quite got him to work through his back properly, at least not when trotting. The canter, however, came out quite nicely. But that is also when my second little misfortune occurred. As I came out of a corner, with Nelson fairly well gathered up as we had a horse in front of us, she told me to pat him on the inside. As in, she meant for me to reach forward with one hand to test that he was carrying himself rather than me carrying him. Which he was, because he wasn’t at all heavy in my hand there.
However, I thought she meant he was being a little lazy now instead and wanted me to tap him on the inside. As in, with my whip on his hindquarters. So I did. :P And since he was pretty well collected, and had been asked not to rush forward, he went upwards instead, changing canter through a rather impressive hindquarter buck. Oops. I had to stop for some laughing once I realized I had misunderstood, and then I had some very responsive canter for the rest of the lesson. Bur for next week, I’ll get the wax out of my ears. :P