Two surprises today. One was not so pleasant; our regular instructor was off again. The other was all the more pleasant—I got to ride Murphy! I couldn’t contain a little squeal of happiness when he was assigned to me, which had everyone else laughing. I’m like a 10-year-old when it comes to Murphy, and in the stables I just never think about ‘appearances’. Its the only time I am comfortable not having my hair and clothes in order, and I talk to and cuddle with the horses like a little pony-mad girl. ;)
Murphy, of course, doesn’t always appreciate my attentions, and today he was not in a good mood at all. So, I just took it nice and slow, and stayed out of his way while tacking him up. No point trying to pressure him into being sociable. Bribes always work, though, and I did give him a few. He doesn’t really get spoiled from it, unlike Malupin who turns into a total greedy pig if you feed him anything.
Once we were down in the arena and had mounted up, I noticed that he felt pretty nicely forward (possibly due to two earlier jumping classes), and hoped he’d be doing quite well from the start. Boy was I wrong. He hasn’t been included in our lesson for several weeks, and apparently he hasn’t done any other more advanced classes either, because he was acting like a total brat. Clearly he’s been allowed to get away with a lot the last two months while doing mostly beginners and less advanced classes, and the first half of a the class was a real struggle. Now, if we had had our regular instructor, she probably would have gotten me on the right track more quickly, but this one didn’t seem to like Murphy much at all (she’s the one who thought it was amusing that I’d ask for him for the Christmas classes), and offered pretty much no good advice on how to deal with him.
Fortunately, once I had gotten over feeling a bit lost (changing instructors always brings home to me how dependant I am on having a good instructor, but that’s what happens when you ride at a riding school for 20+ years and never really get to ride on your own), I did manage to start formulating something of a plan, which mainly including ensuring he’d follow the designated paths as he was trying to cut corners all the time, which definitely sucks when you’re working on circles and serpentines . After a while, he was starting to listen to and respect me again (though he spent a lot of time considering murdering the other horses—definitely grumpy today), and I then tried to work on my hands, to get them higher up, more together and with elastic, bent elbows. That made a big difference today, and he started to become quite soft and willing at the walk. The trot still sucked, though, but as always his transitions from trot to walk were pretty nice at least.
With about 10 minutes left, someone asked about putting their stirrups up, and I decided to follow suit. I had thought about doing it earlier, and I definitely should have. Big difference in his movements, and his trot even improved some too. But the surprise was how he suddenly made quite nice canter transitions, and how I managed to retain a deep, steady seat throughout them. His canter isn’t very good, but it is pretty steady, so I will have to try more canter work without stirrups on him in the future. In fact, I think I’ll try riding him without stirrups whenever we’re doing dressage and have warmed up enough to get past the rising trot segments. It does wonders for the depth of my seat, and for that feeling of ‘liquid’ legs that sort of flow down from the hips, through the knee and to the heel. So, all in all, not so terrible. Only some 5-10 minutes of really good work, but I am quite happy I managed to work through the problems we started with in a fairly methodical fashion.