Moving Along

I had a lesson the other day--first one since the last one I posted about several weeks ago. It was really good. It's nice to get the feedback and to realize that even though I'm riding so much on my own, we're making progress! His topline muscling is coming back, he's really bulking up in his neck. I don't know if his hind end is muscling up as much, but Kathy said it's looking good. And, she started us on an exercise that should bulk up his hind quarters pretty quick. :-)

We started out the lesson on a loose connection, just letting him stretch out, but asking for energetic strides. We basically did Training 1, without the walk. It was a nice way to start out the ride. Then we did some trot and then canter 1/2 passes, all the way to the centerline from the track. He's really doing well with those--maintaining the bend, not trailing his hind end. He loses energy, but it's getting better. Some of the canter 1/2-passes felt so cool--like he was just sliding right over to the center line. During a break, Kathy commented on how much the 1/2 passes had improved from when she first started working with us almost 2 years ago. I mentioned that I still had echos in my head from a previous instructor about not losing the quality of the gait for the exercise. If he had lost the energy in the gait while doing the 1/2 pass, she would have me stop the 1/2 pass and get the energy back. Kathy believes that it's the exercise that helps improve the quality of the gait and I have to say, I do like this way better. It works for Jeeves and that's what matters. Perhaps a different horse it wouldn't work so well with, but that's what's so challenging about riding. Every horse is different.

When we tried some lead changes, she had me turn him straight across the arena, from E to B and ask for the change there, instead of on the diagonal. I tend to let him get too strung out heading across the long diagonal and then he has trouble with the change. This really set us up so that he wasn't anticipating the change and I didn't let him fall on his face. It worked and we had clean changes on both directions. :-)

Anyway, towards the end of the lesson, she had me pick up the canter and turn down 1/4line. Then, 3 strides canter and walk. Make sure the walk is established, no jigging, then pick up the other lead, 3 strides and walk. Continue this down the to the end and forward canter back up the long side and repeat. We did this twice in each direction, then gave him a good long stretchy trot to get the kinks out. This is a really collecting exercise--it's the equine equivalent of doing squats.

This is an exercise we had started last June, just before everything fell apart with his tumors and surgeries. It was fun to try it again and nice to know that we're finally back to where we were last year! He fell on his face a few times in the walk transition, but that was me paying more attention to counting the strides and not setting him up. When I played with this on my own yesterday, I paid more attention to sitting him back and he stayed more balanced.

After doing those, the big canter down the long side felt sooooo coooool! He was forward, he was up, he was round. My seat felt molded with his back, I really had that feeling of being part of the horse, not a rider on top of a horse. It's been a long time since I had that feeling, since my first horse, almost 20 years ago.

The really exciting thing for me is that this exercise is a lead up to tempi changes. It helps build the horse's hind end and helps me get a feel for the timing and rhythm and the aids I'll need to ask for the tempis. Cool!! Who ever would have thought I'ld be working up to tempi changes?! Certainly not me!! I don't know if we'll get far enough along this fall before frozen footing and snow stalls us for the winter, but, we'll have fun playing with this until then. After all, this IS supposed to be fun for both of us. It's hard work, but as long we're having fun, it's worth it.