Last lesson of the semester today. Fortunately, our regular instructor was well enough that she was there today, so we were able to hand over the coffee and chocolate that I had bought for her from the group. Unfortunately, I still wasn’t able to book a private lesson with her on Murphy for Thursday as I had planned, since some wicked pony had bitten Murphy right where the saddle would be. Apparently several of them had come on with bite marks, so it looks like the boys had quite a rowdy time in the field the other day. ;P
So, no Murphy for me today, and probably not on Thursday either, unless I decide to do a bareback private lesson. Still considering whether that’d be worth it or not. If not, I might still call in tomorrow and book one on another horse. Perhaps Sammy, whom I rode today for the second week in a row. Though, I had planned to work on my seat, and Sammy isn’t exactly great for that. But I’ll ponder it some. Otherwise, this was likely the last bit of riding for me for about two months.
Since the weather was lovely and it wasn’t too dusty, we decided to ride in the paddock. And as always, I got a little tense riding a bigger horse outdoors. However, Sammy was quite well-behaved today, so I am glad I got to ride him again. Even if I do dislike not riding Murphy now that it’ll be another two months before I get a chance again.
Rather than doing a regular lesson, our instructor decided to allow us to ride pretty freely, with her overseeing what we were doing. This suited me quite well, as I wanted to work on actually getting some control over Sammy’s shoulders, which meant a lot of circles. However, while I thought I was doing fairly well at getting him to work (while trying to keep my seat in mind, I might add), my instructor soon disabused me of that notion by demonstrating how he should be moving if he was really working. For a while afterwards, I think it went pretty well (and she noted that he was getting sweaty between his hindlegs, which suggested he was actually making proper use of them), but then she suggested that I should switch from sitting down in the trot to posting, because it looked as if I was mistaking his passiveness for collection.
With Sammy, this is a fairly common mistake, because one of the things you have to watch out for is him avoiding work by slowly increasing the speed. However, while I had managed to put a stop to that, he then switched tactics and instead went slow and passive, and it still felt as if he was working because of the way he moves. I suppose its only to be expected that the horses learn a few tricks to save themselves from working too hard after 13-14 years at a riding school. In any case, she got me to ride him more forward from that stage, until I could get a feel for a balanced but forward-moving trot (which definitely was anything but suitable to sit down at, so posting was a very good idea). I have come across this issue with him and his canter (he can canter real slow right off, but its like a rocking horse, so you actually need to ride him forward to get a good canter) but I had never had the same demonstrated so clearly in the trot.
I did do some cantering as well (though less than many others, because he really gets very geared up and hard to work with at the trot after cantering), and after I had managed to get his trot improved, I think I managed a pretty decent canter as well. Certainly, it sounded like he was working hard.
As we finished up, our instructor explained that she had tried to start off being more demanding and asking for effectivity in our riding right off today, something she normally saves for partway into the lesson. She explained that since we weren’t doing any specific exercises, this was intended to show just how we should be riding during those stretches between exercises in a normal lesson. Basically, getting us out of the mentality that you do exercise A and then you just transport yourself and the horse to exercise B, without riding hard in-between. Its when you don’t have an exercise to concentrate on that you can really focus on just being effective. A good sentiment for us to take with us to ponder during the summer, I think.