'Round the world we go!

Today was just a pretty basic lesson. Warmup was that while Kieran was walking on the rail and doing 10 meter circles in the corners, I had to sit three beats, go into half seat for three beats, sit 3, half seat 3, sit 3...

Then, Christina had set up the ring to look like so:

Two trot poles up by A, then a caveletti and a low crossrail (on blocks, very very tiny) catty corner to each other at X.

Basically, I could trot on the rail over the poles, then turn and go down the diagonal over the things in the middle as I changed direction, that sort of thing. Lots of doing it in two point. Then she had me go around posting with only one (the outside) stirrup in each direction. Which is totally harder than doing it with no stirrups. And then I had to go up into two point, then slowly lower my chest toward Kieran's neck (without collapsing in on myself or pinching with my knee or letting my leg swing!), then raise back up into regular two point, then lower, then raise...all while he's trotting along. I've done that exercise while halted before but today was the first time we did it at a trot.

Then (and here's where the post title comes in) she wanted me to try to do "around the world" while Kieran walked in a circle around her.

Talk about terrifying. I was sure I'd fall off.

I did manage to get my left leg over his neck so I was sitting with both legs on his right side but then I just couldn't get up the nerve to swing my right leg over his hindquarters (I was sure I'd fall off backward and land on my head or something). So I chickened out and slid off. Of course, Christina made me get back up and do a real around the world (at the halt!) which I did. Wasn't pretty, but I did it.

Then I did the thing where I swung both of my legs over to one side of Kieran, but one hand on his neck, the other on the cantle (so, if my legs are on his left side, my right hand would be on the cantle, and my left on his neck) so I could then twist myself around to, essentially, have my belly against the saddle. Then I have to get back up into the saddle properly.

I think if I were doing it properly properly, my weight when I twist around would always pretty much stay on my hands/arms, and I wouldn't have taken that moment to lean my body against the saddle. =P

Then, just for the fun of it because the next rider wasn't quite ready yet, we did some quick canters a few times around the ring (and a couple times starting from a walk/trot out of F, heading toward H, we'd start cantering after F across the diagonal and over the cavaletti. Kieran thought I was nuts. ;)

Poles, poles, poles!

No jumping tonight, just lots of exercise with poles.

Not to scale, obviously, but the diagram gives the idea. The "o's" are barrels for us to weave through at the trot, set far enough away from the wall that we have a track to ride straight along it. The "/s" are ground poles set at a trotting distance and the one with "x's" on either side is a caveletti, set at half-height. The "____s" on the right side are poles spaced for cantering.

So basically, we warmed up walking over, around, and through everything (wove around the barrels, wove around the trot poles, etc) then moved to trotting, then did some cantering on the rail. Discovered that when going to the right, Kieran wanted to cut off that bottom barrel (it was a tight turn to go around the barrel properly, but not quite a tight as it looks in my diagram) and then go on the inside track and skip the canter poles. Going the other way was no problem for him. I did manage to get a couple of nice rides going right and called it quits on that particular exercise.

We also did a lot of transitions, walk to trot, walk to canter, trot to halt, canter to trot, canter to walk...

And the nice thing about the ring set up that way was that I had a lot of options for things to do and could keep Kieran guessing. ;)

He gets the day off tomorrow (four days in a row of doing stuff is a lot for him!) and then we're doing a lesson on Thursday.

Forward!

So, on Saturday I went up to the farm and said. "Today we're going to work on forward. Basically, if he doesn't respond to my leg immediately, I'm going to bring the wrath of God." Maybe that sounded a bit overdramatic but hey!

From the moment I get on, whip in hand (and I often ride with one so it's not just that I was carrying one when I usually don't), Kieran's ready to go. His walk is energetic. When I ask him to trot, it takes one squeeze of my legs and a quick swat of the whip before he goes. Still energetic! When I sit and ask for the canter, he goes straight into it (instead of continuing trotting for several strides and needing me to keep after him)!

I'm all like, "well crap, he's on his game today!"

We ended up not riding for too long in the arena, but went outside instead and practiced riding up and down the slope of the driveway (cantering up, trotting down, that sort of thing) because I know he enjoys doing stuff more outside than in the ring.

After that, we went back in the ring and got in a good twenty meter canter circle and showed the intro test A to Christine (who plans on doing it at a local show this weekend). By that point, he was pretty sweaty so (and it was cold!) so we spent a while just walking around before I got off and took off his tack and pulled out the big blue ball and got him to walk after me, pushing it with his feet. He's really figuring out that I want him to interact with it (he also rubbed his head on it and licked it, hah).

Kieran may have also taken the opportunity to roll in the arena when I left him for a minute to go get a camera (he was making funny yawny faces at the ball and I wanted to capture them! Alas, he wouldn't humor me when there was a camera).

Anyway, it made for a good horsey day. :) I figure him being so ready to work can be chalked up to either the weather (it only just got really cold) or him sensing that I wasn't going to play games. Or, you know, both.

On Sunday, we had a lesson and mostly we worked a lot on circles and bending. Though it's not as bad as it has been, I was still having issue circling him (mostly to the right) and getting him to both point his nose a little inward, but also listen to my leg pushing him over toward the wall so our circles would actually be the size they needed to be. It got better as the lesson went on and I got more relaxed and Kieran warmed up and Christina reminded me not to brace with my outside rein. Later, she commented that I seemed to be holding my outside hand a little further back than my inside hand (though not actually pulling with it) and that may also be exacerbating the problem so I have to remember to keep my hands even (which, after I started making myself conscious of really keeping my elbows at parallel points on my sides, it got better).

Another funny thing was near the end when she wanted me to just go in 20 meter circles around X and work on things like, "post eight strides, two point eight strides" then do 4 and 4, then 2 and 2, then do 4 posting without stirrups, 4 sitting without stirrups....I stopped focusing so much on "fixing" Kieran and focusing on myself and doing the exercise and...lo and behold? Our circles were a lot rounder! And it wasn't that he was pretending to lunge around Christina (Kieran will, if she's standing in the middle of the ring) as she made a point of going to stand by the wall. So again, we come back to our problems being mostly manufactured by me. ;)

We also did an interesting exercise that I think helped Kieran warm up. Christina says it doesn't really teach the horse or the rider to do anything, but it does work well for helping the horse to warm up/stretch. Anyway, she put a barrel out and had us first just walk in a small circle around it then I was to slowly work toward getting his nose pointed more toward the barrel and his butt out away from it. Sort of like sidepassing in a circle, but not really. Basically the object was to get him to really stretch his hind legs underneath of himself. Later, I got her to show it to me from the ground and it's neat to see. :)

Hope to ride at least once or twice this week before the next dressage schooling show on Saturday.

Riding Alone

Went up and rode by myself tonight. I think I feel more relaxed if I don't have anybody else watching me. Except that then there's the pressure to come up with stuff to DO. Hah.

So tonight, I set up a few trot poles on one side of the arena by the wall and on the other side of the arena, I set up about five or six orange cones about 4 big steps apart to use for weaving through. We started the evening by just walking around, over the poles, through the cones, going both directions. Then we went through them trotting (I just went around the ring a couple times straight before going through the cones). I tried to stay cognizant through the ride of keeping steady with the outside rein and pushing him over with my inside leg when he'd want to start drifting off the wall. This is much easier to do when he's just walking than when we're trotting, hah!

We also did some transitions when I asked him to halt and he didn't want to stand for a second. So he got to walk-halt-walk-halt-back up-walk-halt. ;) We did a bit somewhere in there too of trot-halt-trot which he did really well at.

Before we both got too tired, I asked him for a canter. This time I didn't worry too much about coming out of the corner, just tried to make sure I wasn't pulling his head around to the outside, and that I really sat for the transition. And that I kept after him until he gave me what I wanted. :) I only realized after we cantered one direction a few strides that I'd asked him to do it for me his "bad" direction (going to the right) but it hadn't been as difficult as it used to be and I wasn't riding with a whip.

Then we went and did it going to the left which was much easier and once again we got a full circuit around the ring. (well, not completely full, I let him go to the inside track to avoid the ground poles :) ). I made sure each time we stopped cantering that we stopped because I asked for it and he got walk breaks in between sets.

After that, we did some other exercises, mostly at a walk, a lot to do with getting him listening more to leg and seat for turning and stopping and some more with getting him to move over toward the wall instead of in toward the center as we went around. And we had several walk-with-no-reins breaks. Really, it wasn't that long of a ride (no more than 40 minutes, I think closer to a half hour) but it was a nice one. He's, as I usually say, such a good boy.

Tomorrow is my last lesson for a while. Christina is taking a break because she's supposed to have a baby within the month. I could take lessons with the backup instructor (the trainer, Carey Reed, who put a few weeks of training on Kieran) but some external-to-horses-or-the-people-in-question issues mean I figured it'd just be better to take a break from lessons for a while. Same goes for Hilary, alas.

Hopefully, I can get things straightened out and get back to doing lessons soon but even if I don't, I'll still be riding Kieran. :)