Almost flying!

Hey guys,

First off I just want to apologise for my erratic update schedule (or lack of). I have not forgotten about this blog, I just haven't gotten around to writing anything in a while. So today I'm going to tell you about my last two riding lessons, because they both nearly saw me flying - in very different ways.

A few weeks ago I was riding a lovely cob, who I'm sure has made an appearance in one of my other posts, and we did some no stirrup work. It was a group lesson, so thankfully there was plenty of walking. The first thing that was a bit problematic was that after the normal stretches you do when the stirrups are taken away (swinging your leg backwards and forwards from your knee then hip, rotating your ankles etc) my legs felt quite tight, uncomfortably so. The stretches basically had the opposite effect to what they should have had. I tried to shake my legs out but it didn't really help. I have narrowed down the source of the problem to either my own dehydration or perhaps because the said cob is quite wide in comparison to what I usually ride, and maybe my legs were at a weirder angle than normal, thus reacting differently to the exercises. Whatever it was, it eventually faded away and I got on with paying attention. So the next incident (and enough time has passed that I'm not quite sure if we had our stirrups back or not - if we did, then I lost them) was when we were cantering. We cantered from the front of the ride to the back, but went past the ride to circle. For whatever reason, my centre of gravity was not matching up with the horse's, so the circle was a nightmare and I very nearly came a cropper. If he wasn't one of the slightly lazier horses who is only too happy to slow the pace, then I probably would have fallen off. Thankfully I could slow him to a walk within a few steps and correct myself. It was really frustrating because I haven't had that sort of problem for a very long time, and I used to ride a horse that treated corners as though he were a motorbike. So that was that lesson, with my near flight being due to almost falling off.

The next lesson was much more dramatic. I was riding the horse I did when I had the cross country experience a few months ago. She was practically a different horse in this lesson. It was a private lesson because pony club had been cancelled, so maybe being by herself was the cause of the issue. Whatever it was, I wasn't best pleased. The first part of the lesson was fine, but the moment we got cantering it went downhill. She is quite quick, and she was not slowing down for anyone, and she was so strong that the exercise might as well have not worked. But the problem is that the horse doesn't realise she's doing anything wrong. She isn't doing it to be naughty, and it isn't that she is trying to get rid of me. She's just fast. My instructor was introducing me to flying changes, so we were supposed to pick up a canter in a corner, then cross the diagonal. We were supposed to trot over X and then pick up canter as we reached the track. By the end of the lesson I felt like I had no control over the horse. I could just about slow her down but she wasn't listening particularly well. In fact, over the diagonal she didn't trot at all, just jumped over the pole that was in the centre of the school and did a flying change. She's smart enough to know that was what we were aiming for. It was a little scary, but my instructor had faith that I would be able to pull her up. Which I did. It just meant I wasn't focussing on the riding aspect as much as staying on and slowing down. The part where I was really flying, however, was that in one corner she picked up the wrong lead and I tried to slow her down and move my feet to give a clearer aid. She hadn't come back to a trot when I must have brushed her with my heels or something (I definitely didn't kick her because I was being so careful about that, the little roadrunner she is). Anyway, she took off at what must have been very close to if not a gallop down the long side. She came back to an overly fast canter for the corner. Such fun! Hopefully the next time I work towards doing a flying change I'll be on a different, more sensible and calm horse haha.

That's about everything for this post. I hope you are all well :)

Until next time!