Golden Oldie

[alobear]

fishbang got to ride my Flossie this week - damn him! - and I was on Conan. Now, last time I rode Conan was when I was having lessons on a Tuesday night, being taught by Ben. This was bad for poor Conan on two counts - it was evening so he was already tired, and Ben is mean and kept telling me to push him on. Hence, Conan and I both spent a miserable lesson with me expending all my energy trying to make him go faster than is physically possible for him. When you're riding Conan, you can hear his creaky old joints clicking, and you can tell from the position of his ears when they start to hurt him.

This time, it was first thing in the morning, so Conan was fresh, and Dominic is much more sympathetic towards him, so he put me and Conan at the front of the ride and made the other two ride to Conan's pace. This can't have been easy for John on Madison at the back!

Anyway, we did our usual warm-up of halt transitions, circles, changing the rein, figures of eight, taking turns to trot past the ride and canter to the back. Conan was great - a little slow, but more than willing to do everything I asked of him. His canter is really weird, though - he's developed his own gait that stops him having to bring his legs up too high so it doesn't hurt him. It obviously works for him, but it feels very strange!

Then we did some work without stirrups, working on our position and balance, and getting the horses moving round smaller and smaller circles to make sure they were listening and keeping their pace up.

Last of all, we took turns to trot past the ride, come back down to walk, and then do an acute transition from walk to canter in the next corner. By the time it was my turn to do this, Conan had perked right up and was raring to go. He sped past the other horses, I actually had trouble getting him to walk, and he went straight into canter absolutely perfectly - it was brilliant.

Afterwards, in the debrief, Dominic said my seat has really improved over the last few weeks and that my canter transitions were the best he's seen from me. I can tell that my seat is a lot more secure, and I've really been working on the canter signals and keeping my legs still once in canter, so it was great to hear that my efforts are paying off.

I want Flossie back next week, though!!