Jumping today. Before I got to the stables, I was pondering whether I wanted to get a chance to try out Nelson at jumping as well or whether I wanted Murphy. Fortunately, I didn’t have to decide myself, and I wasn’t too upset to find out I had been put on Murphy. ;)
Murphy, alas, wasn’t too happy to be disturbed while eating, as the group riding before us had been delayed and he had yet to finish his hay. But other than a few baleful glances warning me not to try and steal his food, he mostly played nice while I got him ready. He did, however, try his best to avoid the bridle for a bit, so he could eat some more. But eventually I got him sorted out, and fed him some minty horse candy to make up for the inconvenience. He seemed happy enough with that.
Down in the arena, he also behaved quite well, and by then I was getting the sense that he was probably fairly laid-back today; perhaps a little tired, perhaps just a bit mellow. Once I mounted up and we started the warm-up, that guess seemed to be confirmed. There was definitely a bit of a lack of energy today, so I determined to work quite hard on that from the get-go. Have to keep reminding myself to ride effectively from start to finish. I certainly do think the Pilates is helping with that, and with my body control.
We started by warming up independantly, and we were asked to focus on getting the horses to listen well to the aids for turns. I also tried to make sure that I was getting Murphy to go forward quite briskly, and he responded quite well though I could feel that he wasn’t at all as charged up as the other week. After a while, we started adding in some cantering too, and my instructor reminded me to focus on having my balance in my feet and knees and on having my knees be quite ‘springy’ so I can stay at a two-point seat for a long while without being tired from them being too stiff. For the most part, the canter transitions worked quite well (that is, he responded fairly quickly and I stayed pretty still, even when he didn’t), though on a couple of occasions I got the wrong leading leg and didn’t notice right off. Murphy is just too good at doing a counter canter without it being very noticeable at all.
The jumping exercises today consisted of one straight and one curved line, with the added difficulty that we were supposed to come to a halt on a straight path following the last obstacle on each line. The distance we had available to accomplish this in was quite short, though we were assured that the horses weren’t likely to try to go through the wall anyway.
Myself on Murphy and another girl on Nelson went first. With a 14 meter distance between the two obstacles, most of us were supposed to get 3 strides between them, though since the two of us were on a large pony and a small horse, we were told to expect either 3 or 4 depending on how well we got them moving. For the first round, I think I got 3 and a half, but Murphy sorted out the jump fairly well even so. Stopping him on a straight line afterwards was harder, though. Out of habit, he (and most every other horses) started to turn automatically to follow the wall like we generally do. The next time around, I got him galloping on better, though the distance still didn’t match up perfectly. The stopping was easier too, though, even with the added speed. For the last try at the this line, the first obstacle was put up so the horses would take a longer initial leap, and now the distance worked out quite well. Plus he went almost perfectly straight afterwards, even if the halt was late and not as good as it might have been. For the most part, I think I also managed to stay still and wait for him when approaching the jumps.
Next up, after a break as we watched the rest do the first exercise, was the curved line. By now Murphy was a bit more forward and didn’t need so much encouraging, so the actual jumping went quite well. However, this time the distance we had to stop in afterwards was even shorter, and I completely forgot about it the first time. The second time, though, I got him to go more or less straight, so we left it at that to be able to squeeze in a small course at the end of the lesson. And once we got around to that, it turned out quite well. He galloped on briskly enough and I stayed steady, except for a moment or two when taking the turn towards the curved line, as he had ended up landing in a counter canter after the previous jump which made the turn pretty tricky for him. My isntructor didn’t say anything until afterwards, though, as she knew he could handle it and thought it was better to leave me undisturbed to work on keeping an even rhythm. Which I more or less managed, even though I had to give him a lot of extra rein to sort out jump three and four on his own as he came at them at a counter canter and at a cross canter.
Overall, I was pretty pleased with how things went. I do need to work on learning to sense when I get a counter canter, but I am getting much better at staying still and just going with the flow, while still being able to sustain the horse’s canter.