Today it was time for the second of my private lessons this week, and once again I was put on Murphy. Before we got started, however, we had some little issues to deal with. As I went to fetch his tack, I saw that one of the ponies, Ida, was loose in her stall. Since her halter hung neatly in its place, I thought that maybe she was left loose for some reason. But while I was wondering about this another horse, Spitfire, ended up walking out of his stall and out of the stable. Clearly, someone had forgotten to get them tied up properly after taking them in from the field. So, as I was alone in the stable, I had to go after Spitfire and get him back in. He wasn’t entirely keen on this idea, but fortunately he didn’t object too much once I had gotten a hold of him.
With that sorted out, I got Murphy tacked up and took him down to the arena. My instructor was already teaching another lesson indoors, and she suggested that I ride outdoors instead, since it was so hot and sticky in there. In hindsight, perhaps not the best choice, since I was wearing black (almost all my riding clothes are black ;P) and since there wasn’t that much of a wind.
While she finished up the other lesson, I warmed up Murphy, taking extra care to work on his right side and his obedience for my leg aids. When she came out, she then explained she wanted to combine what we did on Tuesday with an earlier private lesson, which involved a lot of focus on corners and canter transitions. We started off with much the same exercise as on Tuesday, with leg yields in alternating directions. The first few times, I once again had a bit of an issue with changing inner side fast enough, but I sorted it out more quickly than last time, certainly. I also tried to pay attention to my usual position faults that I had been reminded of when looking at the video from Tuesday’s lesson (shot by my darling Elio, who kindly tags along for these things). I haven’t looked at the video from today yet, so I am not sure how much better I did.
What I did feel went better today was getting Murphy even more onto his hindlegs. He was quite responsive to collection as well as extension, and he was much less argumentative on his right side. So the lateral work went quite well, I’d say. Of course, then we added the complication of some cantering. With all the private lessons I’ve had, my way of riding a canter has certainly improved a lot, but I still revisit old sins now and then. Especially when I am really hot and tired. The first round of cantering, to the left, went fairly well. I had to be reminded of a couple of things, like just sitting still and trusting him to continue cantering instead of trying to push him along, but on the whole the results were good.
However, the left is his easy side. And once it was time for the right, we had had to divide up the paddock to make room for another lesson, so I had a tight turn to make and one side was marked just with cones, not with the railing. Which meant that most of the time his left shoulder floated away through the line of cones. It took a lot of work for me to get the right hold of the left rein (not only does he prefer to take the right rein, I have a tendency to hold the right steadier) while keeping the right rein soft and the right leg firmly applied. The results were pretty uneven, though towards the end I finally started to do okay, and when we dropped back down to trot for some final leg yields, he was suddenly very supple and very well balanced. The last bit of rising trot was brilliant.
We then finished up, and she asked me to walk him outside of the paddock to cool him off. However, Murphy decided that he wasn’t keen on walking around the stable area as intended, and since I am a bit of a chicken outside of a fenced-in area, I didn’t have the guts to push him. He’s pretty cool outdoors, but when he is alone, he does get a bit more attentive to everything around him. For example, he spooked a tiny bit when a bird flew up nearby, and that was when I realized I was in a bad way from dehydration because I got quite dizzy. So, I had to walk him back and forth along the road, plus do an extra turn nearer to the stable, before we could finish up.
Since he was totally soaked, I had asked about just washing him off with a hose, and my instructor had said sure, he’s fine with that. But no, he had to be contrary at first and not walk into the stall where we have the hose. Once in there, however, he really enjoyed being hosed down from top to toe, and I rather wish I had been able to do the same to myself. I think I’ll wait a while for my next private lesson, to avoid having myself cooked alive while riding again.