Showing off can make a fool out of you, but has some upsides too

Ok, so I was totally correct in suspecting that I was overly obsessing about the softness and flexion in Becky’s walk and trot. Not that they weren’t important – just that it was all I was concentrating on, circle after circle, and driving us both nuts.

But the next time I went to see Becky, I didn’t have a chance to obsess about anything. Because this time, my Mum came with me. Mum hasn’t actually seen Becky for a few years now – she’s been living overseas and, now, she lives in another state from me – and she has never seen me ride Becky. So, come what may, I was going to show off!

Actually, there was some logic to my madness: I figured that if I had a very strong focus on performing well, then Becky would listen to me better.

I was mostly right, too!… eventually…

But first, Becky made a complete fool of me.

There was quite a bit going on in and around the arena when I mounted: another horse inside the arena, horses in the paddock right outside, kids running around nearby, something with a motor rumbling… plenty of distractions! So Becky wasn’t her most cooperative self, and I wasn’t on the ball as much as I hoped to be. So she had a tantrum and threw a couple of bucks – which I was used to. Unfortunately, in the middle of that tantrum one of the ties on my bridle came undone and Becky came out of the buck with the bridle hanging around her neck.

That I wasn’t used to.

Becky though, bless her heart, did not take any further advantage of my ludicrous position where I had no control whatsoever and, instead of bucking harder to remove me, she calmly trotted off in the direction of other horses across the fence.

I decided not to stick around to see what would happen next and swung off her.

Although embarrassing, this little interruption was very useful as when I got back on her, I approached it as if I was starting all over again, and this time my focus was spot on. I picked a spot on the ground and concentrated on keeping the same distance from it at all times, which didn’t allow Becky to drift her attention away from me. After that, I went all around the arena at a nice sitting trot, following a pattern that was in my mind, and doing a few shoulder-ins.

Mind you, I had to do a few more shoulder-ins after that cause Mum completely missed what we were doing and just thought we were trotting on nice diagonals. :-)

And the most amazing thing was that throughout all of it Becky was rhythmical and soft. Without me struggling to pull her head around or anything!

This weekend, I tried to repeat the experience, but I guess without a real audience, it didn’t quite work as well as before (although no embarrassing moments intruded either). I have definitely not been imagining that the right rein going to the right can be quite heavy, but the difference is I am not obsessing about it, and just trying to keep my lines and rhythm, keep Becky forward, and rewarding any softenings I do get. Also I do think that Becky was really not wishing to bend: at several spots in the circles she did her best to try to drift out left from the circle. Once, as an experiment, I simply released the right rein, without putting pressure on the left, and, sure enough, Becky just swung left on her own accord and headed for the fence – her thoughts were obviously strong in that direction. In other parts of the circle, the pressure on the right rein came off completely!

Marina had taught be to try and correct this drifting out using my left rein – to stop the shoulder from falling out - and then using the right rein just to keep Becky bent around to the right. Sometimes keeping her bent around to the right took a lot of force!

Again didn’t get much improvement on that heaviness, but overall the rhythm was good and her attitude was very good.

When I got off, I took up Becky’s reins from the ground and asked her to trot around in the circle to the right to see if I felt the same sort of heaviness from the right rein on the ground as I did in the saddle. As I guessed, it wasn’t there. Becky was much more willing to soften and bend to it from the ground, which poses a big question of what am I doing different in the saddle. My suspicion is that it has much to do with the position of the reins: when I am on the ground, the left rein is much closer to Becky’s neck, and sometimes even over it, keeping her left shoulder in. The right rein is bending her a lot more directly to the right and comes down as I hold it in my hand in front of me, instead of going up into my hand when I am in the saddle. I suspect that this gives Becky a two-fold signal of very clear unignorable direction to bend, and to soften downwards.

I have to try and keep the feel of that in the saddle somehow.

Comments

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[supra society]

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