Another cold Tuesday (with some snow, in fact) and I was again concerned about getting Fleur. Fortunately, it seems my instructor has decided I’ll be on Sammy for the canter work, which is just fine by me. His canter is certainly a lot better than both Fleur’s and Murphy’s, and he’s pretty solid most of the time (except when people set off fire crackers right outside the arena ... ;P). I was, however, a bit jealous to see that someone else got to ride last weeks new arrival, a pretty grey Arabian mare who is just the right size. But fortunately that means she’ll be in my weight class too, and since she was a little frisky yesterday, I guess I can wait a few weeks to try her out. ;) I do hope they keep her, though. We need more big ponies/small horses.
Like last week, we worked on cantering, though the demands were higher today. We started off with a pretty lengthy warm-up, and I got some really nice trotting out of Sammy once I was reminded not to give too much on the inner rein just because he has a habit of overbending. He still needs the support there to actually get to work.
With the cantering, it was up and down. I was a little timid at first (mostly because Sammy was in a mood to kill all the new horses—poor old guy doesn’t like new additions, it seems), but then I started to sit down and actually ride the canter. Wow, what a difference. I’ve been so used to Murphy’s canter, which needs a lot of work to feel nice, that with Sammy I just accepted the ‘okay’ canter he gives as a default. Once I rode him like I ride Murphy I suddenly got to feel what he actually feels like when at work. Good old boy.
Of course, I still have a way to go in terms of getting him collected. He’s very easy to get to a nice, balanced canter, without any rushing at all, but going from canter to trot invariably means a really fast trot. As soon as he’s been warmed up by some cantering it is very difficult to get a balanced trot out of him. He forgets all about being 20 then. ;)