Today was the first lesson of a new semester, and as always one thing weighed heavily on my mind: the weigh-in. I wasn’t sure if I had managed to drop the extra pounds put on over Christmas, and if not I’d have to starve myself a little more until next week. Fortunately, I was in for a pleasant surprise. My weight was still within the ‘E’ range (55-60 kg), which means I’ll be able to ride Murphy even if they do drop him from F to E again. This is particularly important now that it turns out our group will be kept in this timeslot, but we’ll get four or five junior (below 18) riders added. They’re apparently all fairly young, so probably pretty small and light. If I had weighted in as an F, that might have meant missing out on Murphy more often than not.
For this lesson, however, I did miss out on him, probably due to him having been used for two jumping lessons already. Instead I was put on Malupin, which naturally made me somewhat apprehensive, considering how ... explosive he was over Christmas. As a result, I was a bit too cautious to start with, especially as he did feel a bit frisky and tense. Fortunately, my regular instructor has no problem with me not allowing a completely long rein at the start of the lesson, as she knows how nervous I can get.
Once we got started, Malupin felt like he was lame on all four legs. I suspect it was a result of both of us being a bit tense, and although I have been able to get him working well in the past, it took longer this time since I wasn’t relaxed enough. It helped, however, that the exercise was a slow, precise one, which allowed me to concentrate on our paths and turns rather than to worry about what he might be up to. Eventually, I did start relaxing, and once I felt calm enough to put some pressure on Malupin he stopped feeling like his legs were going to fall off. My instructor reminded me that with him, even more so than with Murphy as Malupin is a pretty slender horse, I really need to work hard at getting a sense of a lot of horse in front of myself. Which, of course, means straightening up my upper body and sitting down properly. As usual, my seat had been the first causality of my nerves. But now that I was feeling better, I was able to tale her words to heart, and it really made a difference.
As we neared the end of the lesson, we started adding in transitions to trot and canter while following the same diamond-shaped pattern we’d been using at the walk (to practice good turns that were halfway towards turns on the haunches), and now I got quite a surprise. When you get through to Malupin, and he really starts to work, he moves big. I’ve felt some of it before, but nothing like today. In fact, I thought he was doing his transitions poorly and throwing himself forward, when in fact he just took such big, scopey strides even at the start of both the trot and the canter. And once I was past the initial surprise, he moved very well at the trot and incredibly well at the canter. I’ve had what I thought was a good canter on him before—indeed, my instructor has noted that he has cantered very well with me, whereas his canter usually is pretty poor—and this was even well beyond that. A good, slow pace, nicely rounded, well balanced and with his hindquarters well beneath himself. Wow. Made me wish I had been bold enough to start cantering earlier, but then again, having worked hard on the walk-to-trot transitions for a good while probably had much to do with the great canter.
I did, however, run into a bit of a problem as we finished up by trotting them and trying to get them more forward and down, in a more relaxed rather than collected fashion. I had generated so much energy and impulsion that there was no way Malupin was going to relaxed now, and I quickly found myself rather too forward as his rushing ahead made me a little nervous again. If I had been riding privately, I would probably have wanted to work him collected for a little longer, so that he was at a more tired rather than a highly energized stage before I tried to wind him back down again. Still, not a bad lesson at all, even if it came out a little uneven. Next time get him (soon enough, I suspect), I’ll try to remember how to get him to the co-operative stage more quickly.