Hippoi Athanatoi

Yesterday’s theory lesson was…interesting.

We were supposed to plan out the rest of the lessons, to decide when we’d do our double-length jumping lesson and when we’d ride the dressage test we’ve been practicing in pieces during the semester. I guess we sort of managed that, but we mostly ended up talking about weird experiences with horses. Weird being things like the foal our instructor helped deliver the day before which had very badly bent legs, and the horse that died while she was riding it.

Next week, its dressage again, and then our extra-long jumping lesson.

Back in the pattern of lateness, it appears. Last week was spent wrestling with a particularly pesky subtitling job and work for the “writing historical novels” class. But I did ride, of course, even though I felt rather miserable before heading off to the stables. Fortunately, I left feeling much better. Unfortunately, I believe it is just a theory lesson this week, so we’ll see how that goes in terms of my mood.

In any case, I was back on Hedvig, and had an interesting ride on her out in the paddock. As she had already shown indoors, she is a bit of a silly girl, and there was plenty to be silly about outdoors. In fact, I didn’t really get a lot of good work out of her as she was a bit too high-strung to really settle down. However, I enjoyed not being nervous on a flighty horse even when out in the paddock. It also seems as if she’s getting fitter by the day, so that’s good news, and she has definitely shed some weight since she first came to the stables.

We worked with transitions, first between walk and trot and then a bit between walk and canter, and I did get to feel that she has quite some power in her hind quarters when they are properly engaged. I probably only got a few strides of it at walk and trot, but I could feel it very distinctly.

As for the cantering, I did get to try out some of that too. She finds it pretty hard to actually pick up the canter, and at first I was being too lenient on her. But once reminded to be a little firmer, she managed pretty well (though she does have to run into it a bit), and she’s certainly very enthusiastic once cantering. She can’t be collected at all yet, the strength isn’t there, but I could tell she has much more potential for a good canter than for example Murphy. It is not at all as flat and ground-tied.

I’ll blame Easter for this one. First I had to cook a bunch of food, then I had to eat a bunch of food. Exhausting.

I had a pretty good jumping lesson last Tuesday. We were out in the paddock for the first full lesson of the semester, and that was probably a good call because Murphy was actually a bit lazy even outdoors. Possibly, he found it a bit too dusty (I certainly did), but I think he’s just having a bit of a lazy period.

Given that we were going to be jumping some tricky curving and bending lines, I knew I’d need decently engaged, so I tried to focus on getting him a little charged up during the warm-up. At first, I got a little too active, but after a reminder (and a suggestion to use transitions; I have to keep that in mind) I managed to wind him up so I didn’t have to constantly be there with my legs reminding him. Its very much been a focus of our instructor’s of late: get the horses thinking forward so that you’re not carrying them every step of the way, because you need to focus on other things than just maintaining movement.

This proved to be a key ingredient for this particular lesson. We had some tricky turns to negotiate that first resulted in a lot of drifting out to the side, but where I managed to get a pretty good feel for how to turn him after a few tries. Even with his rather terrible canter, I managed to get him lighter in front so I could raise him up through the turn instead of tilting him over to one side and letting him dig. I am not sure if he’s gotten a little bit stronger or if I have learned a few new tricks, but I am definitely having more success at getting a bit of an uphill feel in the canter.

For the last exercise, he was almost too forward, but he wasn’t just running and getting long and flat. So, when my instructor asked me to slow him down, I was able to do so without losing the canter, and for the last jump I got a nice, controlled turn afterwards where I clearly felt he was going slow enough that I could easily turn him, but that didn’t mean he was going to lose the canter. Afterwards, she said this was the first time she’d dared to tell me to slow down, because otherwise it usually just means losing the canter entirely on him.

When I got to the stables this Tuesday, I found Murphy was still turned out. Darn, I thought. He must be injured. Fortunately, they had just forgotten to get him in because our regular instructor was ill and everything was a bit disorderly. So, I got him anyway and he was mostly okay with coming in with me.

Jacqueline Carey has updated her official site and posted the first chapter from her next Kushiel book, Namaah’s Kiss. Its due out June 24th, which of course feels like far too long a wait.

I was back on Murphy this week, perhaps because we were going to be doing a fair bit of cantering (which Murphy is bad at, but Hedvig is worse), or perhaps because Hedvig had already taken part in at least one jumping lesson and she doesn’t have the stamina for a full set of lessons so far. Of course, no complaints from me about riding Murphy. ;)

Well, at least I got to ride the whole lesson this last Tuesday. However, I can’t say I was entirely pleased with how I did. I was a little too ... mellow, but then again, I had been rather sick for a week prior to the lesson.

I was back on Hedvig, and apart from a little dancing around as we got into the arena (which would have rattled my nerves if she was taller) as well some silliness about the door and one little buck during the lesson, she was quite well-behaved. As for last week, they never really found anything wrong with her. It may have been something little bothering her, or she was just being a mare. I started without my whip, just in case it had been the issue, but was then able to take it back without any problems when she needed a few little nudges.

The work we did was pretty well suited to improving Hedvig, since we focused almost entirely on half-halts. Since she has a tendency to hurry up, she needs a lot of help to settle into a more work-friendly rhythm, and in theory half-halts should be good for that. In theory, that is. I find them very tricky myself, and on her it was particularly difficult because she was almost too responsive. I had to concentrate a lot on getting them smooth rather than having very distinct starts and stops. No wonder I gave up on learning to drive a car. ;P My coordination stinks, and while it is improved by riding, it always seems to lag behind the curve.

Still, I did get some more relaxed work out of Hedvig too, and it feels like she moves quite nicely once she starts lengthening out a bit. I didn’t try cantering her, though. She’s very bad at it, and I didn’t want to mess up what I had managed to get in the trot by letting her rush into a canter. But I am hoping to try soon, and I do hope they will keep her even though she’s got a bit of a temper, since she’s just my kind of horse (both in terms of her size and her temper).

The universe clearly had something against me riding yesterday.

To start with, I’ve had a nasty flu for the last few days, and while I had expected it to get better by Tuesday it turned out to be a pretty bad day. I felt like I was burning up in the morning, though after finishing up a subtitling job just before the deadline I was finally able to get some rest in. When I woke up again in the afternoon, I felt more alive again and decided to go after all. Like last week, I was put on Hedvig, and looked forward to another lesson on the little black troll. But I had barely gotten into the saddle and had her walk a few steps before she started bucking. Oops. Not quite according to plan. However, I had been told she could occasionally be difficult along one side of the arena, so I decided to just ride ahead and see if she’d settle in once she got the idea that I wasn’t about to back down. But, she kept doing it.

Amazon needs to start teleporting books. I just placed an order of some things that are out now and that I want right off, and some things that aren’t out yet but that I still want right now. A delivery estimate for May 1 to May 21 for Corambis makes me all sad. The reading of the first chapter that Monette put up a while ago on her lj really whet my appetite. And speaking of her livejournal, right now she’s auctioning off three ARCs of Corambis.

I also ordered The Shadow Queen by Anne Bishop, The Last Paladin by Kathleen Bryan (aka Judith Tarr), Lace and Blade, Lace and Blade II and another unreleased item, Kings and Assassins by Lane Robins. Now, if I could only have all of these to curl up with right now, I’d be a happy girl. I am in the mood for fantasy with a good dose of romance and angst.

Yesterday, I finally got a chance to try Hedvig, the not at all tall but very broad Swedish coldblooded horse. She looks pretty much all black, and she has a gorgeous mane and tail, as well as a very pretty head under all that hair. Quite a darling.

Last week fell by the wayside in more than one way. I needed to be done on time for once (we rarely are, both because the groups before us are delayed and because we too get delayed), and of course the group ahead of us was about 20 minutes late. So, I had to quit early. Argh. And Murphy felt pretty great, too, and we were doing more transitions while focusing on our seats. I tried to use the time we had efficiently, without being rushed, and I guess I did okay ... but it still felt unsatisfactory. Though, I did get some good pointers about my seat, such as the fact that I tend to keep the stirrup too far forward on the foot. I think the whole “don’t get your foot stuck” was drilled into me too firmly, and it has lead to some tension in my leg position. It will be interesting to see what sort of effects changing this will have. I bet it will feel weird.

Today, we had a theory lesson, discussing the six building blocks of the German training scale (though our instructor puts rhythm before relaxation). We managed to finish late once again, because we got a bit sidetracked discussing all sorts of things, like the Eurovision Song Contest and harness racing. Though we did get some useful discussions done too, in particular about how to work on motivating different horses in different ways.

No, I didn’t already have this Tuesday’s lesson. This is last week’s. ;P Depression and work has continued to distract me from actually getting things done.

It was, however, a pretty good jumping lesson for me and Murphy. The goal was to work on turns, and we had three jumps down the center line that we had to turn onto from a fairly tight angle from the short end. At first, we jumped just the first fence and were supposed to take the turn in such a way that the horses knew they weren’t supposed to continue on to the second. The second exercise was jumping the first and the third, and we were supposed to go to the right of the middle jump and then turn left after the last jump. We finished up by jumping the whole line.

I had another lesson I really enjoyed this last Tuesday. Rather than working on a specific element from the dressage program, it was all about basic obedience. We basically spent the lesson starting and stopping, and as always such simple, single-minded exercises get surprising results. It can really work very well to break things down into smaller, more bite-sized pieces.

Tuesday’s lesson was pretty great. We tackled the next part of the dressage program, which meant a corner, turning up onto the center line and a leg yield out to the side again. 

Murphy was ... charged up. There’s definitely stuff going on in the herd, he was still rather feisty (got very close to taking a bite out of me on a few occasions, especially after the lesson when I saw teeth very close to my face :P), but he was also pretty eager to work. I got him fairly engaged from behind at an early stage, and the leg yields worked quite well at a walk. I think I did better this time at keeping my hands positioned right without getting too caught up in thinking about it.

Then we got to the trot, and it got a little trickier, partly because we were actually too many during the lesson due to a mix-up in booking reserves. Even though Murphy isn’t exactly a big mover, he does cover a fair bit of ground when he starts using his hindquarters and I can’t quite manage to collect all that extra drive to make it go more upwards instead of more forward. I got some nice lateral movement, but I also got a lot of little stops and starts as he just wasn’t able to fit in.

And at one point we had a close encounter with Hedvig’s behind. Hedvig is a new pony, and she apparently has a temper, because that behind flew up very high in the air. She’s gorgeous, though. A rather small representative of the North Swedish Horse, almost entirely black and with a stunning mane and tail. Apparently Murphy has a thing for her, heh. Fortunately, he mostly concentrated on work during the class, and I was pretty happy with the end result. But when I do manage to get him engaged from the start I need to get better at not letting the energy just rush on forward.

I should have been spending most of the day on a subtitling job, but I’ve found myself distracted by a few things, such as a couple of posts on a Swedish blog about Science Fiction and Fantasy. One is a longer essay about the two Swedish translations of Tolkien, which raised some very interesting points about how non-native speakers may perceive a language and about the role of the translator, and another is a shorter commentary about fantasy in general.