The lesson this Tuesday was one of those magical moments, or magical 45 minutes. I got to pick between Murphy and Nelson, so of course my special darling won. Nelson was mightily jealous when I was getting Murphy ready, and there was something about Murphy that told me he was in a good mood.
That was proven as soon as I took the reins (and, in fact, even when I was just walking him on a long rein before that, he felt positive), and Murphy promptly started chewing contentedly on the bit and getting in between my legs and hands. I knew I was in for a treat then, because while he can be good when you persuade him that yes, you really do need to work this lesson and not just be a lazy riding school horse, it can’t compare with when he says “oh, work! love it!”.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that he won’t test to see what he can get away with in terms of pushing a shoulder out here and slipping a hindleg out there. There is snake or something else that’s all slithery in his lineage, after all. But for the most part, we had nice and nice trot. Then we got around to the main exercise, a circle coming off each short end of the arena, into canter down the length of it.
I had a bit of issue with not doing too much during the walk. Ulrika felt I was overdoing it when I tried to keep him alert and ready for the canter, she said it was more like giving canter aids I didn’t mean all along. So, I tried to back off from cueing him forward unless he was actually slacking. Of course, he does slither and wobble on circles, so sometimes I felt I had too much hand and too little leg when parrying. I need to talk to her next week about how to correct for that without becoming overly active with my legs. I also had a bit of an issue with staying calm during the canter, since Murphy figured out right off that we were just cantering down to the next corner and would start slowing down a little early.
But other than that? Wow. Almost from the first transition, we had wonderful lift off in the canter. I could feel his hindquarters coming in under him. He almost never does that, and I can’t recall ever feeling it so clearly, at least not so many times in the same lesson. We even got some pretty good canter out of it, and a few very nice transitions back down to walk. You could still tell his co-ordination isn’t very good, but he was trying so hard and getting so much right.