cwb
29th Nov 2007, 08:04 AM
Well Hovis was actually quite up for it yesterday, compared with last week's hard work to get him going - either that or he has just accepted I am not going to let him get away with being lazy!
We now get left alone to warm up while Hayley sets out the arena with poles, etc. so I did a few active walk/halt transitions, followed by some trotting on both reins and a canter on both reins - he was brilliant - listening and going into trot and canter at the first nudge!
So Hayley got us doing some more complex work involving circles and shallow and deep loops on the long sides of the arena in both trot and canter. His was so good going into canter and only needed a few squeezes to keep him going round the corners.
He was a bit unbalanced in the deep loops in canter as he was on the wrong lead for the bend to return to the track and he tended to fall back to trot for a step or two before responding to my aid to get back into canter.
We had an "interesting" episode on a left rein circle (his worst rein) in canter over poles - he fell back to trot to negotiate the poles and then immediately back to canter, we did about 5 circles like this, despite me nudging, tapping with the whip and growling "go on" at him each time we approached the poles.
On the 6th attempt we actually got the canter over the poles but he tripped on the last one !:eek: His head, neck & shoulders suddenly dropped and I followed, wrapping my arms round his neck and whispering in his ear "whoaaa", "staaaaand", so we went from canter to trot to walk to stand in about 5 seconds, with me bear hugging his neck. Once we had stopped, I was able to sit up and lever myself back into the saddle! :o
After this we managed to canter over the poles on the right rein with absolutely no trouble at all!
At the end of the lesson Hayley said my balance had been fine (except for the incident) and that in future she expects me to be able to get on any new horse and find my balance within the 5 minute warm up. She also said that Tetley and Hovis are the most unbalanced horses in the school - I think she deliberately got me on these two to help with my balance, we shall see! ;)
We now get left alone to warm up while Hayley sets out the arena with poles, etc. so I did a few active walk/halt transitions, followed by some trotting on both reins and a canter on both reins - he was brilliant - listening and going into trot and canter at the first nudge!
So Hayley got us doing some more complex work involving circles and shallow and deep loops on the long sides of the arena in both trot and canter. His was so good going into canter and only needed a few squeezes to keep him going round the corners.
He was a bit unbalanced in the deep loops in canter as he was on the wrong lead for the bend to return to the track and he tended to fall back to trot for a step or two before responding to my aid to get back into canter.
We had an "interesting" episode on a left rein circle (his worst rein) in canter over poles - he fell back to trot to negotiate the poles and then immediately back to canter, we did about 5 circles like this, despite me nudging, tapping with the whip and growling "go on" at him each time we approached the poles.
On the 6th attempt we actually got the canter over the poles but he tripped on the last one !:eek: His head, neck & shoulders suddenly dropped and I followed, wrapping my arms round his neck and whispering in his ear "whoaaa", "staaaaand", so we went from canter to trot to walk to stand in about 5 seconds, with me bear hugging his neck. Once we had stopped, I was able to sit up and lever myself back into the saddle! :o
After this we managed to canter over the poles on the right rein with absolutely no trouble at all!
At the end of the lesson Hayley said my balance had been fine (except for the incident) and that in future she expects me to be able to get on any new horse and find my balance within the 5 minute warm up. She also said that Tetley and Hovis are the most unbalanced horses in the school - I think she deliberately got me on these two to help with my balance, we shall see! ;)