With my whip (it broke off towards the end last week) fixed up like a broken leg with a thin nail and some black thread, but without any new boots or leggings, I headed off for today’s lesson at least decently prepared. At the stables, I found a new horse in Teneriffa’s stall (she’s recuperating in the loose box reserved for sick horses). Quite a pretty lady called Tierra who looked like she might not be too much taller than Fleur or Sammy. Perhaps someone I can try out, I thought, though when I asked about her later she sounded a bit frisky, so we’ll see. Either way, I didn’t have to worry about riding anyone frisky today, as it was Murphy time for me again.
In the stall, he was (as he has been of late) quite well behaved, even when I set about clearing the caked mud away from underneath his belly with a curry comb. Either he’s really accepted that I dominant to him (I still make a point of moving his shoulder whenever I come into his stall, just to test him), or (more likely) he’s happy with his position in the herd. Whichever it is, I am glad I don’t have to watch my back quite so much with him. He also behaved quite well down in the arena, and didn’t even seem to consider walking backwards when I got onto the mounting block.
Today’s exercise, alas, wasn’t terribly well suited to him. His canter is ... not so good, and we were supposed to turn in from the middle of the short side of the arena and do a change of rein on a diagonal across half the arena while cantering. To get him geared up for the canter, I kept quite a brisk pace throughout the warm-up, which we did on two big circles, one going clockwise and one counter-clockwise. I immediately noticed, however, that my legs were all over the place this week too. I am having a really hard time moving from boots to jodhpurs this time around, so I have to get a new pair of boots or a pair of leggings Real Soon. And I need to find some exercises to strengthen my stomach, because I think some of the difficulties of the last weeks may have to do with my worsening back.
Once we got started cantering, I almost managed a good transition the first time around. The instructor started saying I was doing it right and sitting still, but just then I felt as if he was about to fall out of the canter and I started pushing with my upper body. Argh. I then had a few not-so-good transitions, and again got nagged about not being firm enough. I suppose I should have used the whip more quickly, but it also feels as if Murphy does need to canter for a bit, and do a few transitions, before he’s both fully warmed up and properly geared up. Once he reached that stage, he responded quite well to a fairly small but firm aid for canter.
No matter how warmed up he is, however, its always hard to keep him cantering. Especially since she’d noted earlier that we were going a tad too fast to manage the turn we were supposed to do, so I had to try to slow him down and get him to carry himself better. Anything but easy when you’re not really good at cantering yourself, and I as I had expected most of the turns came out pretty poorly. If I managed a reasonably tight turn, he’d fall out of the canter, and if I managed to keep him cantering it would be a very wide turn, with him bent like a banana. Only on the very last one did I manage to get enough outer aids to keep him from floating off in that direction and enough leg to keep him sort-of cantering. My upper body, alas, was nowhere near being still throughout this.
So ... fun riding Murphy, as always, but mixed results. I did, however, manage one really good bit. Murphy is one of those horses that cantering a lot on really improves his trot and, unless he or I get too tired, his walk. After having cantered a lot, he gets the propulsion and impulse that normally is quite hard to get with him, and since the exercise meant that we’d go from walk to canter and then to trot and back to walk quite a few times in a short span of time, he really got onto his toes. With someone like Sammy, this would have meant a rushed trot, but with Murphy it means he collects quite beautifully.
Anyhow, what happened was that towards the end, when we had just done that turn in canter and the following transition to trot, we were told to prepare for the trot to walk transition and Murphy (as riding school horses are prone to doing) slowed down to a walk as he heard the instructor say the word. But since I wanted to keep him working a bit more, I asked him to trot again, and for once he started with his hindlegs and moved into a nice, well-balanced trot. I then sat back just a little bit more, to prepare for a proper transition, and I was more than a little surprised when I got a really nice collected trot that transitioned very smoothly down to walk. Heck, he was almost trotting on the spot for a moment or two.
Its those moments that mean so much, especially when things are going so-so otherwise.