Keith_Beef
Novice equestrian, accomplished equichetrian
Apologies in advance for quite a long and probably boring post, but I'm looking for a bit of feedback on how my usual Sunday "morning" lesson went yesterday.
(11h00 to 12h00, so really hardly counts as being the morning).
The conditions were a bit odd: there was a bit of mist about 50 metres above the ground but the air wasn't damp at ground level; when we arrived to tack up at 10h30 the temperature was about 10°C, a bit cool, but warmed up to 14°C by the time we entered the arena, ideal.
The usual instructor was absent (I think he got a day off) and his replacement was a very pleasant young woman.
But there are a few new horses on the yard, two of which don't have their own tack, yet... the bottom of the day sheet had a handwritten note concerning two new horses: T can use the B's tack, and R can use.... blank. And one of the girls in the lesson was listed to ride R, and asked me what to do...
So we took the sheet over to the edge of the arena, signalled to the instructor who was in the middle of a lesson that we wanted to talk to her, and when she had settled her riders into an exercise she came over to talk to us.
The was when we found out that she is a freelancer at our school for the first time: so she doesn't know the riders, doesn't know the horses, doesn't know what we've been doing for the pas few weeks. She knows the yard manager and our instructor, though, and it was the instructor who, the night before, drew up the list allocating the horses to the riders. Her advice was "take a look at R, and grab the tack from a similar sized and shaped horse".
I can almost imagine you lot throwing up your arms in horror. "Get out the saddle fitter!!!"
Anyway, the girl and I had a look at R's withers, corpulence, head size, and looked at a few other horses until we thought we had an idea of whose tack we could borrow (all the horses belong to the yard, so no problem with borrowing).
We got our horses ready and went out into the arena. I had Treasure, a horse I've ridden almost every week for the past couple of months, who is nice, obedient, but can "pretend to be lazy" in the words of another instructor. He also has a tendency to like to turn to the left and look for the other horses in the arena. Getting him to go straight when he can't see any of the others while he is trying to turn to the left all the time is a bit of a handful for me.
I don't know if I'm doing the right thing, and didn't have time in the class to ask about it. I found that if I held the right rein away from his neck, left rein against the neck, with very light tension in both, that turned his head to the right and stopped him from turning his head to the left. But then he would start moving diagonally to the left instead of straight. To counter this, I pressed at the girth with the left leg, moved my right leg away from his body and put a little bit more weight in the right stirrup.
This was during warm-up in walk, trot and (to a lesser degree) canter.
That seemed to cure the problem of him not going straight, but I wonder if there is a better (and kinder) way. He has what I think yo call a gag bit, like the attached image.
The other thing to mention about him is that he will bed and turn really easily to the left, and quite easily to the right. During the later part of walk warm-up, I had him doing very crisp 90° turns right and left with little more than a bit of leg pressure at the girth and turning my own shoulders to where I wanted to go.
Now I mentioned above that he "pretends to be lazy"... in reality, I think that he's got this reputation because he has trouble anything slowly: slow down his walk, and he will stop; slow his trot and he will walk; slow his canter and he will trot... and I think that at our level, it is hard for us to maintain a gait while slowing it right down. And this is what Sunday's lesson was all about.
After warm-up, we started walking in a big rectangle using half the arena. The instructor had us slow the walk right down using the seat then reins if that wasn't enough, but keeping on a bit of leg, alternating left and right, if the horse felt as if it was going to stop. This is the first time an instructor has talked about alternating the leg. Then as we walked in front of her, we were to let out the horse's head so it could lengthen its stride.
We did that for a while, then did the same exercise at a trot, on the right rein.
Then we did the slow way and transition to canter. And this is where I nearly ended up on the sand. Treasure is an old hand at riding school exercises and knows after one or two repetitions what he is supposed to do, and has a tendency to do it automatically. And when he saw another horse canter and overtake us, squeezing between us and the arena fence (the instructor exaggerated, but said their whiskers must have touched), Treasure jumped to the right and wanted to go off in a canter, too.
I took him towards the centre, calmed him down a bit and rejoined the circuit. Nice slow walk, transition straight to canter without any trot, maintain the canter for one full circuit and then transition down to trot then walk. Great.
We changed rein and did the same slow walk to canter, full circuit the trot and walk. And this is where, for a second time, I nearly ended up on the sand. Walking nicely, very slowly, until just before drawing level with the instructor he decided to lift his head and break into a canter... I wanted to teach him a bit of a lesson, there: he doesn't get to decide when to canter, he has to wait for me to ask for it. Oh, he didn't like that, started to spin and lift his head a bit. I admit, I think I panicked a little bit there, thinking he was going to buck or rear, so I bent him to the right around my leg and held the reins low...
Then the instructor asked "why are you punishing him? he just wanted to do the exercise"...
He calmed down a bit, and I had him do some 10 metre circles at a walk on both reins, then had him turn his hindquarters around while keeping the front quarters more or less still (he does this really easily), inside the big rectangle where the others were still doing the transition exercise, then came back to tell the instructor why I'd stopped him.
"He started the canter before I asked for it. He has to understand that I'm in charge here, he does the canter when I ask for it, not before."
We repeated the exercise another couple of times, and he was as good as gold: always waiting for me to ask for the canter. I asked him to canter three metres before reaching the instructor, then the next time around asked for it three metres after her, and he got it right both times.
All in all, I think it was a good lesson, I learnt a lot about how this particular horse behaves, and I didn't fall off.
Pilots have an old saying "any landing you can walk away from is a good landing".
But I think that "any lesson you can walk away from is a good lesson" is not necessarily true, if it ends up with the rider getting into bad habits or if it turns the horse sour.
I'll stop there, and go and put three eggs in the frying pan...
(11h00 to 12h00, so really hardly counts as being the morning).
The conditions were a bit odd: there was a bit of mist about 50 metres above the ground but the air wasn't damp at ground level; when we arrived to tack up at 10h30 the temperature was about 10°C, a bit cool, but warmed up to 14°C by the time we entered the arena, ideal.
The usual instructor was absent (I think he got a day off) and his replacement was a very pleasant young woman.
But there are a few new horses on the yard, two of which don't have their own tack, yet... the bottom of the day sheet had a handwritten note concerning two new horses: T can use the B's tack, and R can use.... blank. And one of the girls in the lesson was listed to ride R, and asked me what to do...
So we took the sheet over to the edge of the arena, signalled to the instructor who was in the middle of a lesson that we wanted to talk to her, and when she had settled her riders into an exercise she came over to talk to us.
The was when we found out that she is a freelancer at our school for the first time: so she doesn't know the riders, doesn't know the horses, doesn't know what we've been doing for the pas few weeks. She knows the yard manager and our instructor, though, and it was the instructor who, the night before, drew up the list allocating the horses to the riders. Her advice was "take a look at R, and grab the tack from a similar sized and shaped horse".
I can almost imagine you lot throwing up your arms in horror. "Get out the saddle fitter!!!"
Anyway, the girl and I had a look at R's withers, corpulence, head size, and looked at a few other horses until we thought we had an idea of whose tack we could borrow (all the horses belong to the yard, so no problem with borrowing).
We got our horses ready and went out into the arena. I had Treasure, a horse I've ridden almost every week for the past couple of months, who is nice, obedient, but can "pretend to be lazy" in the words of another instructor. He also has a tendency to like to turn to the left and look for the other horses in the arena. Getting him to go straight when he can't see any of the others while he is trying to turn to the left all the time is a bit of a handful for me.
I don't know if I'm doing the right thing, and didn't have time in the class to ask about it. I found that if I held the right rein away from his neck, left rein against the neck, with very light tension in both, that turned his head to the right and stopped him from turning his head to the left. But then he would start moving diagonally to the left instead of straight. To counter this, I pressed at the girth with the left leg, moved my right leg away from his body and put a little bit more weight in the right stirrup.
This was during warm-up in walk, trot and (to a lesser degree) canter.
That seemed to cure the problem of him not going straight, but I wonder if there is a better (and kinder) way. He has what I think yo call a gag bit, like the attached image.
The other thing to mention about him is that he will bed and turn really easily to the left, and quite easily to the right. During the later part of walk warm-up, I had him doing very crisp 90° turns right and left with little more than a bit of leg pressure at the girth and turning my own shoulders to where I wanted to go.
Now I mentioned above that he "pretends to be lazy"... in reality, I think that he's got this reputation because he has trouble anything slowly: slow down his walk, and he will stop; slow his trot and he will walk; slow his canter and he will trot... and I think that at our level, it is hard for us to maintain a gait while slowing it right down. And this is what Sunday's lesson was all about.
After warm-up, we started walking in a big rectangle using half the arena. The instructor had us slow the walk right down using the seat then reins if that wasn't enough, but keeping on a bit of leg, alternating left and right, if the horse felt as if it was going to stop. This is the first time an instructor has talked about alternating the leg. Then as we walked in front of her, we were to let out the horse's head so it could lengthen its stride.
We did that for a while, then did the same exercise at a trot, on the right rein.
Then we did the slow way and transition to canter. And this is where I nearly ended up on the sand. Treasure is an old hand at riding school exercises and knows after one or two repetitions what he is supposed to do, and has a tendency to do it automatically. And when he saw another horse canter and overtake us, squeezing between us and the arena fence (the instructor exaggerated, but said their whiskers must have touched), Treasure jumped to the right and wanted to go off in a canter, too.
I took him towards the centre, calmed him down a bit and rejoined the circuit. Nice slow walk, transition straight to canter without any trot, maintain the canter for one full circuit and then transition down to trot then walk. Great.
We changed rein and did the same slow walk to canter, full circuit the trot and walk. And this is where, for a second time, I nearly ended up on the sand. Walking nicely, very slowly, until just before drawing level with the instructor he decided to lift his head and break into a canter... I wanted to teach him a bit of a lesson, there: he doesn't get to decide when to canter, he has to wait for me to ask for it. Oh, he didn't like that, started to spin and lift his head a bit. I admit, I think I panicked a little bit there, thinking he was going to buck or rear, so I bent him to the right around my leg and held the reins low...
Then the instructor asked "why are you punishing him? he just wanted to do the exercise"...
He calmed down a bit, and I had him do some 10 metre circles at a walk on both reins, then had him turn his hindquarters around while keeping the front quarters more or less still (he does this really easily), inside the big rectangle where the others were still doing the transition exercise, then came back to tell the instructor why I'd stopped him.
"He started the canter before I asked for it. He has to understand that I'm in charge here, he does the canter when I ask for it, not before."
We repeated the exercise another couple of times, and he was as good as gold: always waiting for me to ask for the canter. I asked him to canter three metres before reaching the instructor, then the next time around asked for it three metres after her, and he got it right both times.
All in all, I think it was a good lesson, I learnt a lot about how this particular horse behaves, and I didn't fall off.
Pilots have an old saying "any landing you can walk away from is a good landing".
But I think that "any lesson you can walk away from is a good lesson" is not necessarily true, if it ends up with the rider getting into bad habits or if it turns the horse sour.
I'll stop there, and go and put three eggs in the frying pan...
).