This week has been a busy one and I've also been having a few back problems which have made riding a bit tricky. Nevertheless, every time I get on Fudge I'm really pleased with how he's improving!
Tonight was funny - I was trying on a secondhand jump saddle. It looked perfect on, but as part of trying it I hopped on and had a ride and he very clearly said "NO!" and refused to even make a trot transition! Such a shame as a beautiful saddle and very reasonably priced for the quality of it. Then, because I didn't want to put him away and feed him after the last thing he'd done was refuse to trot (despite understanding why he did it!) so I took the jump saddle off and inelegantly struggled back on bareback. It was the first time I'd been on him bareback and potentially the first time he'd ever been ridden bareback! He was very unsure and I have to admit that I was too! But we plopped around the arena for ten minutes, got some quite nice swinging trot work (though rather shorter-striding than we've been working on) and I took the opportunity to use my unencumbered seat contact to play with collecting the trot. I did this by increasing the energy in the trot and then going through the deeper patch of sand in the arena and making the 'shape' of the trot go up instead of out. It's a hard thing to describe but not a particularly hard thing to do once you've got the idea. Fudge seemed to enjoy it and certainly gave me some quite passage-y feeling steps though I doubt they looked much like it!
No comments:
Post a Comment