After seven long weeks of no riding and no close encounters with any equines at all, it was finally time today for the first of the two private lessons I had booked as a warm-up to the proper lessons starting next week. As usual, I’ve spent the last week or so worrying that Murphy wouldn’t be alright (that’s the worst part about the summer break at the riding school), though yesterday when I called up to confirm the time I made sure to ask who I’d be getting for my lessons. I was more than a little thrilled to find out that I had been put on Murphy for both lessons.
I was, however, a little less thrilled with the weather today. All of a sudden, the warmth that has been absent since June (or was it perhaps May) has returned, and I am really not to keen on riding in really hot weather. Especially not in black, which is the colour of most of my riding clothes. Fortunately, today wasn’t quite as bad as yesterday, and as we got to the stables there was at least a bit of wind there. Murphy seemed quite happy to see me, and as usual when the stable is quiet he was in a good mood. He was also more than a little chunky. Though not as badly off as Fleur, who looked like she might have a foal any moment.
To prepare for the lesson, I had spent some time considering the problems I had struggled with last semester and what sort of thing I should work on today. I didn’t quite settle on anything until we were down in the arena, though, when I decided that the best way to start (I didn’t want to do anything too strenuous, like lots of cantering) would be to work on my seat. Specifically, on my position in the saddle and on my leg position when doing various kinds of lateral work. I have a bad habit of moving off to one side or the other, and of moving my legs way too far forward or back.
After warming Murphy up (and finding, to my surprise, that despite the weather he was quite eager and forward-going) and making sure I had him respecting my legs both in terms of moving forwards and sideways, we went right ahead and started the main exercise. It consisted of me turning in between the centre line and the long side, straightening he horse out, guiding his front end onto a diagonal and moving him laterally. My instructor asked me to concentrate carefully on each part of the exercise and to ride it at a posting trot to start with, since it would help keep me centred and keep my legs from moving too far back.
Right off, we ran into one of my little problems, though not one I think we can get rid of with training: I confuse directions easily, so I was actually trying to move his front end the wrong way instead of doing a bad job of moving it the right way. ;P Once that got sorted out, I managed to get a pretty good flow through the exercise. After a while, my instructor asked me to sit down partway through the exercise, and that worked really well for keeping me still once I had sat down too. We also had to change the exercise when Murphy decided to add the complication of figuring out the exercise. I then had to start doing it in such a wau that I could switch directions easily, so that he would never be sure which way we were going. Amazingly, it took just one round of me going in an unexpected direction for that clever Irish pony to stop anticipating me.
Eventually, we moved to having me sit through the whole exercise, and now my instructor also started asking for some polish of some of the details. She wanted me to make sure I could easily control which side was the inner side, regardless of which direction Murphy was moving in. For example, when I turned in and prepared to move him laterally to the left, she wanted to make sure that the left side was the inner side when I guided his front end onto the diagonal, but as soon as I asked him to move laterally, I had to shift to having the right side as the inner side. With my directional confusion, it took me a while to sort it out in my head, but once I had it pictured it right, it worked surprisingly well. My instructor commented that she was impressed that we were able to get to the stage of polishing up the lateral movement and improving the quality of it, rather than just working on my seat.
She also commented that it looked like I had, once again, improved over the summer despite not riding any, and she was pleased to see how focused I seemed to be. I guess all the input and all the thinking I do during the semester sort of germinates at the back of my head while I am not riding for some weeks. It may be too much to sort out when I am in the middle of it, but given a few weeks of downtime, it matures. Or something. Either way, it was quite a really good class. Murphy wasn’t quite as easy to get collected as he has been some other times, and his right side was a bit difficult to get supple, but he was moving forward at a very nice, balanced trot, and it did seem as if my improved position really helped him move more freely. I’d say that this was one of the lightest, softest experiences I’ve had on him, and though it may have been a touch too easy, it was a good start to the semester that clearly made both me and Murphy happy.