Pedro
16th Jan 2001, 10:44 AM
Friday, 12 January
A return to the origins! After a long time without riding Catraia who was my very first teacher (and who taught me my hardest landi... I mean lesson :)), we were back together again.
There were three of us tonight, me with Catraia, André on Lord and one of the newer students riding Asterix. The new student had to work a bit harder to keep up with the increased tempo of the lesson. Used to the slower lessons with riders more or less at the same level, it was probably a little awkward to find himself trying to follow us. I could look at him and see myself in pretty much the same position, and although it feels as if it was a lifetime away, it was really no more than two months back...
The lesson proper came up with a bad start. After the warm up we were told to extend the trot and post, as I was the one in front it was up to me to set the pace. Now, used to a strange mix of forward going horses with much longer strides than Catraia (and consequently faster) and Juby, a horse that will need a lot of incentive to speed up, I found myself asking Catraia to speed up, and speed up, and speed up... until we were going at what felt like a normal rising trot. Of course, we were in fact racing around the place with little control over directions :o! Francisco started to shout "Pedro! Pedro, what's going on? What are you doing? Back to walk! Slow down!", I was thing what had I done wrong? Was it not going close enough to the corners? No reason to get all worked out. That little unwitting stunt earned me a sermon about turning the lesson in a race with André, to which followed hymn #7 "Speed be not impulsion" ensued by hymn #32 "Come to us the almighty half-halt" and finally hymn #15 "Be one with thy horse" all from the "Classical Book of Horse Prayers" ;). Even though I'm being a little sarcastic here, I do love Francisco's small lectures and I stay around other lessons so I can enjoy them. After tonight's particular sequence though, I made damn sure I wouldn't make the same mistake again, and carried on at a more calm and cadenced gait.
Over the course of the lesson Francisco was clearly more demanding with me and André than usual (nothing to do with the lesson's start, I'm sure). He gave us set goals to complete, most of them concerning corners and circles at trot, and expected of us to be able to accomplish. If Catraia was not as cooperative as Mefisto or even Chérie, neither was she deaf to my requests. If we were unable to complete an exercise successfully at first, we would do it the second or third time around.
The final part of the lesson, the usual canter, wasn't really bright. I don't know why is it that I relax better with some horse and go better with the canter, and tense up and loose stirrups with others. I can sit the motion well enough every time, it's just that sometimes I'm so tense or fallen forward or rising my knees or whatever it is I'm doing that I find it difficult to use proper leg aids. After a while something fell into place and it all worked better, unfortunately I was still at a loss as to what had changed and so was Francisco. I can still see significant improvements over each lesson, so I'm not unduly concerned. I have to remind myself that, on the all, I've summed no more than two hours of canter, and I've covered a lot of ground in that time :-).
Pedro Fortunato
Lisbon, Portugal
A return to the origins! After a long time without riding Catraia who was my very first teacher (and who taught me my hardest landi... I mean lesson :)), we were back together again.
There were three of us tonight, me with Catraia, André on Lord and one of the newer students riding Asterix. The new student had to work a bit harder to keep up with the increased tempo of the lesson. Used to the slower lessons with riders more or less at the same level, it was probably a little awkward to find himself trying to follow us. I could look at him and see myself in pretty much the same position, and although it feels as if it was a lifetime away, it was really no more than two months back...
The lesson proper came up with a bad start. After the warm up we were told to extend the trot and post, as I was the one in front it was up to me to set the pace. Now, used to a strange mix of forward going horses with much longer strides than Catraia (and consequently faster) and Juby, a horse that will need a lot of incentive to speed up, I found myself asking Catraia to speed up, and speed up, and speed up... until we were going at what felt like a normal rising trot. Of course, we were in fact racing around the place with little control over directions :o! Francisco started to shout "Pedro! Pedro, what's going on? What are you doing? Back to walk! Slow down!", I was thing what had I done wrong? Was it not going close enough to the corners? No reason to get all worked out. That little unwitting stunt earned me a sermon about turning the lesson in a race with André, to which followed hymn #7 "Speed be not impulsion" ensued by hymn #32 "Come to us the almighty half-halt" and finally hymn #15 "Be one with thy horse" all from the "Classical Book of Horse Prayers" ;). Even though I'm being a little sarcastic here, I do love Francisco's small lectures and I stay around other lessons so I can enjoy them. After tonight's particular sequence though, I made damn sure I wouldn't make the same mistake again, and carried on at a more calm and cadenced gait.
Over the course of the lesson Francisco was clearly more demanding with me and André than usual (nothing to do with the lesson's start, I'm sure). He gave us set goals to complete, most of them concerning corners and circles at trot, and expected of us to be able to accomplish. If Catraia was not as cooperative as Mefisto or even Chérie, neither was she deaf to my requests. If we were unable to complete an exercise successfully at first, we would do it the second or third time around.
The final part of the lesson, the usual canter, wasn't really bright. I don't know why is it that I relax better with some horse and go better with the canter, and tense up and loose stirrups with others. I can sit the motion well enough every time, it's just that sometimes I'm so tense or fallen forward or rising my knees or whatever it is I'm doing that I find it difficult to use proper leg aids. After a while something fell into place and it all worked better, unfortunately I was still at a loss as to what had changed and so was Francisco. I can still see significant improvements over each lesson, so I'm not unduly concerned. I have to remind myself that, on the all, I've summed no more than two hours of canter, and I've covered a lot of ground in that time :-).
Pedro Fortunato
Lisbon, Portugal