Ever Decreasing Circles
Nov. 5th, 2006 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearI rode the dream horse that is Flossie again this week - that's three weeks in a row. Much more, and I'm going to be thoroughly spoiled and in real trouble if they put me on someone more difficult.
Anyway, I wasn't complaining! There were four us in the lesson today, but we had half of the school to ourselves, which meant we had more scope in what we could do. The usual warm up of halt transitions, 20 metre circles, figures of eight and taking turns to canter to the back ensued. I was lead file again (as Flossie doesn't like being behind other horses and she was the biggest and fastest in the lesson anyway) so there was lots of maneouvreing and leg signals, but Flossie did everything really well.
Part two involved circling at 20 metres, 15 metres and 10 metres, working to stay in trot and keep the pace up even on the smallest circle. Flossie's quite big, so she had some trouble with this, but we got it right in the end.
Part three was individual work. The rest of the ride slowed to walk while I kept trotting. I rode past the ride, then did a few transitions from trot to halt and straight back into trot again. The culmination of the exercise came when I dropped down to walk just before a corner, and then asked for canter. Flossie went from walk to canter perfectly, and it felt wonderful (though Dominic did say it was cheating a bit doing it with Flossie, because she's really good at it).
The downside to the last part of the lesson was that I had to walk round at the back of the ride for 15 minutes while everyone else had a turn, but there's not an awful lot can be done about that and the lesson was still brilliant. I was particularly impressed when Mary got James to do walk to canter, because he'd been really slow and unresponsive for the rest of the lesson. I got an even better idea of how good a rider Mary is, when Rosemary tried the exercise with Martini and failed miserably - because Mary usually rides Martini and gets her to do everything perfectly.
Flossie really doesn't like being behind the other horses, so she did her bouncy thing towards the end. It feels really weird - she suddenly bunches up her body and you can feel her back rise a couple of inches, she starts doing really short strides and brings her head right up. It feels as if she's working up to shoot off like a rocket, and it certainly keeps me paying attention right to the end of the lesson! Overall, though, she's amazing.
Anyway, I wasn't complaining! There were four us in the lesson today, but we had half of the school to ourselves, which meant we had more scope in what we could do. The usual warm up of halt transitions, 20 metre circles, figures of eight and taking turns to canter to the back ensued. I was lead file again (as Flossie doesn't like being behind other horses and she was the biggest and fastest in the lesson anyway) so there was lots of maneouvreing and leg signals, but Flossie did everything really well.
Part two involved circling at 20 metres, 15 metres and 10 metres, working to stay in trot and keep the pace up even on the smallest circle. Flossie's quite big, so she had some trouble with this, but we got it right in the end.
Part three was individual work. The rest of the ride slowed to walk while I kept trotting. I rode past the ride, then did a few transitions from trot to halt and straight back into trot again. The culmination of the exercise came when I dropped down to walk just before a corner, and then asked for canter. Flossie went from walk to canter perfectly, and it felt wonderful (though Dominic did say it was cheating a bit doing it with Flossie, because she's really good at it).
The downside to the last part of the lesson was that I had to walk round at the back of the ride for 15 minutes while everyone else had a turn, but there's not an awful lot can be done about that and the lesson was still brilliant. I was particularly impressed when Mary got James to do walk to canter, because he'd been really slow and unresponsive for the rest of the lesson. I got an even better idea of how good a rider Mary is, when Rosemary tried the exercise with Martini and failed miserably - because Mary usually rides Martini and gets her to do everything perfectly.
Flossie really doesn't like being behind the other horses, so she did her bouncy thing towards the end. It feels really weird - she suddenly bunches up her body and you can feel her back rise a couple of inches, she starts doing really short strides and brings her head right up. It feels as if she's working up to shoot off like a rocket, and it certainly keeps me paying attention right to the end of the lesson! Overall, though, she's amazing.
