For anyone who's read my last blog (why am I writing this when no one reads these?????), you may remember (again why???) I mentioned that I need to sort my washing line reins out... well this is one of the first things she picked up on! She told me to shorten my reins; and then shorten them again. I thought that I was doing the right thing by having him on the buckle end and asking him to move forward but turns out by not having a good, consistent contact and having shorter reins, I was just allowing any energy generated by his back end just trickle out the front end which is why I felt like I was kicking and kicking and going no where. When I shortened my reins I found that I didn't need to have him racing around at 100 miles an hour to feel forward. What I was doing was having a really long rein in the hope that he'd eventually start to stretch his neck but actually, when riding with a shorter rein, he's more likely to use his muscles so then when I did lengthen the rein he stretched so much better because he actually needed it!
I told her our main problems we needed to work on were getting him more forward off the leg and working on bending- he's like a cardboard box to turn. Well the whole issues with forwardness were sorted just by shortening my reins so then it was time to work on bending. Well, this is definitely a work in progress and we didn't necessarily achieve it in this lesson (without her taking over control of the reins anyway haha!) but I learnt that it's not impossible for him and that I need to be more persistent with him and start asking him for a bit more because he's ready to start learning. She agrees with me that it might be a long road to head but that we will get a dressage pony out of him yet and to still go and give it a try because she said he's got one of the best free walks she's seen from such a small horse and you get a double score for that!
All in all, I think I really benefited from it and it was a massive confidence boost that my riding isn't as terrible as I believed and I'm really looking forward to the next one :)
Oh and my new clippers arrived the day before! I know it's going to be a very long process to get him clippable but we had our first session the other day. I only intended to run them over him turned off and perhaps turn them on next to him at the end but we got a lot further than that; we had them turned on, all over his back end and even up by his neck by the end, which is a massive achievement! Good pony that day all round :)
Beth & Jack x
No comments:
Post a Comment