Ignoring everything else about this picture (Walker's bad head position, my hunched shoulders, etc.), you can see that my pelvis is tipped (red line) even though my heels/shoulders/hips (green line) may seem correct-ish
Friday I had a pretty unlucky day. I ended up doing all these errands that took longer than expected that included me going to the bank in my breeches smelling like a horse and my law school in the same attire. The laundry machines are broke in my apartment building and I no longer have clean towels. Then I get to the barn excited to ride outside, I step in the barn door, turn around, and a torrential downpour starts! Just my luck! Instead I decide to ride Walker English and trot the crossrail a couple times instead since I didn't have my Tuesday/Thursday jump days this week. I even brought my camera to videotape my ride. I got all the bad stuff out of the way first, and wouldn't you know it, the blasted camera shut itself off before I jumped the crossrail and I missed everything that I actually wanted to videotape!!!
All that being said, it was actually a pretty good ride. Walker was a trooper over the crossrail, and even though my cantering could use a lot of work (flailing, me pushing him for every step, him drifting into corners and breaking stride, etc.), we did some nice work at the walk and halt. I did some pretty nice turns on the haunches, and I did some reinless work where I maneuvered him around the arena with just my legs. I think I'm going to try a little more of that in the future at more of the gates. It's good for him to listen to me, and good for me to figure out the appropriate way to maneuver my horse as well as to strengthen my leg muscles. Then, without reins, I asked him to stop (not groundbreaking or anything), but then I said "back back back" and the smart little darling backed himself up without me needing to pick up the reins or even cue him with my legs. Every time I'm on the ground these days or in the saddle, I'm always careful to say "back" when I'm backing him because he's smart enough to associate patterns with actions, and clearly he picked it up all on his own!
Walker in his cute little English gear - teal is his colour
Then on Saturday I had to have a quick ride because my mother was coming to visit me. I got out to the barn later than I wanted to and it was pretty cold, but I decided to ride him outside anyway. I was pretty proud of Walker because the other girls were having a hard time with their horses. One of them lunged her horse and the horse bucked so high on the lunge line that her feet went above her head. When I brought Walker out, the other girls were just going in, and one of them said to me, "Did you lunge him?" to which I replied, "Nope. We'll find out in about 10 seconds if that was a good idea or not." I hopped on my little bolter, and he fell right into his nice little Western Pleasure jog and never gave me any trouble. It just goes to show that I know my horse very well, and I know the situations that bring out the worst in him (*cough* Wednesday night lessons *cough*).
Anyway, since I could only have a quick ride, I just did some of the usual stuff - walk/trot/canter, circles, etc. I tried to work on some good position at the beginning, but pretty much left it for another time. I would rather be able to videotape my ride and dissect it later if I'm going to work on stuff like that. I did what I could though.
With regards to cantering (our main area of contention), he was pulling a lot of his same tricks - lead switching, trying to veer out of the circle, etc. When we went down towards frantic corner at one point, I got angry and hauled off and kicked him with the spur, which resulted in a nice little buck (bigger than normal). The next time we came around frantic corner, I could feel myself losing him, like I always do, and just like normal, I kept my leg on anyway so that he knew that I wasn't giving up. Then, when he was just about to break stride, he changed his mind AND HE LOPED FRANTIC CORNER! It was the first time he's done that since I've been working on this (other than a couple hyper days where all he wanted to do was run run run run run). I was so happy that I kept him loping and then stopped him before we got back to frantic corner to reassure him that he did the right thing. Then I worked a little bit on controlling him without reins at the walk again (which I was also happy with since we were in the outdoor arena and he could very easily have decided to take off), and then we called it a day.
Never was there a happier person who ever cantered a simple circle!
My life is complete. I feel like I should not ride him outside again so as not to ruin the high I'm on! Well, considering that they are calling for snow tonight, that might just happen...
No comments:
Post a Comment