I’ve been feeling a little queasy these last two days, and during the drive to the stables I was hit by some serious motion sickness, worse than I’ve had it for many years. It also lingered for quite a while after I had gotten to the stables, so I started worrying about being put on Fleur again while feeling less than well. Fortunately, I got Nelson instead, and eventually I got better too.
A much slimmed-down Nelson, I might add. Not that he’d lost any weight, but he had lost a lot of hair. The fluffy coat had been replaced by a short, clippered coat, so he doesn’t look quite so much like a polar bear now. He’s still a bit of a cheeky thug, though, who is all over you when you get him ready. He did eventually get some candy for his efforts, though I made sure not to feed him out of my hand. Murphy, who is in the stall next to Nelson’s, also got some of course. He seemed rather curious about why I was standing around in and outside of Nelson’s stall instead of his own today, and kept poking his head in over the side of the stall. A little jealous (and not just about the candy), one hopes. ;)
With my last lesson on Nelson in mind, I made sure not to lengthen my stirrups too much. At first, I kept them quite short, but as I felt I ended up too high above him when trotting, I eventually lengthened them one notch. The shorter length seemed to keep him a little calmer, perhaps because my leg was a bit steadier, but the longer length seemed to work better from the point of view of how I was positioned on him.
Already when I led him down to the arena, Nelson had shown that he was quite frisky, so I ended up having to put aside my whip pretty soon. Even so, it took a lot of work to keep him from rushing through each gait and each exercise. Fortunately, the exercise we spent most of the lesson on was pretty good for that sort of work. We rode serpentines and added a circle at the curve of each serpentine, to make sure we had time to work on getting a soft inside with the inner shoulder moved into the body.
Throughout most of it, I wasn’t too happy with the result of the exercise as such, but having to focus on watching his pace, watching the line and keeping him between my hands and legs somehow resulted in me not overdoing things with my hands and legs. I did end up a little forward at times, but I think I managed to correct that fairly well once reminded of it, and eventually I was able to slow him down pretty well by riding a slower rising trot. He was quite wobbly, though, and very hard to keep on the set line, but at times I managed to get through to him and get some okay work.
The real difference, however, only showed up once we moved onto cantering on the larger circles. My first few attempts at canter transitions were not so great, since he moves quite a bit when cantering (he feels a bit like a rocking horse), and I ended up not sitting quite still, partly because I was trying to check if I had the correct lead. But then I started getting the hang of it. I had to allow him to go forward quite a bit before I could start collecting him, and I had to make sure to keep my outside rein quite short and very steady. He’s got a very short neck, and his legs are a bit all over at times, so he needs help with his balance. Once my instructor had pointed that out, I was actually able to feel much more clearly when he needed support, and I was able to canter him more slowly and still keep him from falling out of the canter by using my legs at just the right time.
After working on him like that for a while, he came down quite nicely with his neck and gave me a pretty darn nice and round canter. He still needs more strength and stamina to be able to sustain that kind of work for too long, but today he did really well. And not just in one direction but he continued to do well once we switched. He also managed some pretty good transitions to canter once he’d gotten that far, and once it was time for the last bit of trotting he really surprised me. He came down even further, and I was able to almost drop the reins entirely with him staying balanced. For a horse that is built like and moves like he does, that was pretty darn impressive. And I am very pleased I was able to get that far on someone other than Murphy.
Speaking of Murphy, I need to have a talk with him next week, to ask him to be extra careful these next few weeks. The riding school is holding a competition for group IV and V (I’m in a IV) on the 17th of May and I am thinking of signing up for both the dressage and the jumping. Which is proof that I am a total masochist, because competitions make me so darn nervous, and I still keep wanting to enter into them.