The Chronicles of a New Rider - Part LXIII

Pedro

... and Pimpao!
Oct 12, 2000
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Wednesday, 23 May

Summer has arrived! Summer has arrived! It looks like the rain is finally gone (fingers crossed). Today, for instance, we had hot weather, with a threatening warm wind blowing from the west. The weather seemed to be affecting the horses who were more agitated than usual - or maybe it was just my own, somewhat dark, mood clouding my better judgment ;)!
One way or the other, we sure had a hard time getting them out of the paddock! André and I went take care of that business. He went into the paddock with the dogs (who positively looove this part of their job) while I waited on the area between the paddock and the first group of boxes, to prevent the horses from going to the parking lot. Things started more or less fine, André drove them easily towards the gate and the first two left the paddock. Although Ice went to the wrong set of boxes (the one on the inside courtyard) the filly Safira went straight to hers. While the remaining four were hesitantly on the brink of the paddock, Safira convinced herself that she had been tricked into leaving alone. She left her box and ran towards the others who, seeing her return, stampeded to the inside of the paddock again :rolleyes:!
I was concerned about Ice loose on the courtyard and decided to go get him. I assumed that André would see me missing and wait and, anyway, there were two other students there who would hold any horse that left the paddock in the mean time. I went inside to find Ice calmly waiting next to Lezíria's stall (who seems to exert some form of attraction over the other horses who always seem to go to her when loose!). I got a lead rope and clipped it on, after making sure he wasn't frightened or nervous. We had just left the yard when the other horses stampeded out of the paddock in our direction. I got us in a corner out of the way, but they didn't seem interested in going to the yard - running around in circles in the driveway was a lot more fun! I might agree with them if I wasn't in the middle of it, holding Ice who was getting pretty worked out by now. Although he started to back up and pull on the rope, I managed to hold on and gently calm him - after being dragged for a couple of metres. When Ice settled down, so did the others around him. I them used the opportunity to lead Ice to his box, hoping the other would follow. In fact they did, and so we went, the six of us (Lotus had ran to the parking lot). All the time I made a strong effort not to look behind. There was something daunting about having two tons of impatient horse muscle following five hundred kilos of nervous horse, held on my hand by nothing more than a cotton rope!

Everyone finally settled in their respective places. I went to saddle Mefisto, and everyone else went take care of their respective charges. After all the excitement Mefisto was very willing to come out and work, I took him to the arena, checked everything and mounted. The last to come in was André bringing Gladiador and accompanied by Francisco. Probably frustrated by being inside when all the other horses had been having their "fun", Gladiador decided to entertain himself then and there! He started fidgeting when André was trying to mount and suddenly just blew out. He started to run around the arena, alarming the other three horses and just being a general nuisance. Seeing that he wasn't in the mood to stop anytime soon, and was a potential problem for the riders in the arena, Francisco shooed him to his box so they could allow him to calm down safely before trying again. After a "detour" through the parking lot they finally managed to get him to the box. He was still too agitated to remain in the box and finally ran off again. After some more exercise in the parking lot :-D he finally settled down and from then on behaved as if nothing had happen!

The lesson itself was nothing special. Francisco went give another lesson in the covered arena, while the four of us in the larger one were left to work on our own. Personally I find that having the time to test and work things out by myself, that I have been learning in the regular lessons, helps settled down the accumulated experiences.
I tried to improve my seat and test the influence of different stirrups lengths. I also made an effort to analyse the difference in my own posture between having stirrups or not. In terms of riding I tried influencing the walk with the seat, going from a slow contained trot to a more extended one. Canter transitions from a calm, slow trot (including the best, smoothest transition I ever made), improving the quality of the canter - namely calming Mefisto. Small and large circles at the three gaits, a little bit of leg yielding and finally, just for fun, canter-halt-canter transitions.

The only exciting aspect of the lesson was in it being particularly collision prone. Out of the four rider only one had a little more experience so, even if we all knew the rules, the lack of practice was obvious and we had a trio of "collisions" at canter - one of them involving me. By the end of the lesson the three of us had improved a lot in this regard: no more turning inside without checking if someone was about to overtake you, calling out your intentions when about to meet another rider dead on, etc. And afterwards, with the lesson learn and experience obtained, we went to the bar have a drink and joke at our apparent uncanny ability to always meet, the four at the same time, in the corners. One cantering one way, the other cantering the other way, one changing rein and the other leg yielding. We ended having to either swerve around each other or stopping dead in our tracks while trying to decide who was going where, by which route :D!


Pedro Fortunato
Lisbon, Portugal
 
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