2023 & 2024 Riding Journey

#4 Back to Mariah

So, I again had to miss the lesson from the week before because of weather.  And I honestly thought I was going to miss it again, but for the first two hours was pretty decent and we snuck in our ride.

Both James and Vivie came for the lesson.  Vivie was on Romeo and James on Cordell.  My trainer seemed to debate for a bit about which horse I would ride, before telling me to catch Mariah for myself.  We rode in the indoor arena, where we could get out of the wind sometimes.  

I've been riding Riggs for the last two lessons and I think that affected this ride.  It's was kinda weird, because I haven't ridden Mariah for more than a month.  But, on the other hand, she's the horse I've probably ridden the most in the last year.  So I went into this ride thinking that we'd get along fine.

Which, for the most part we did.  But I should've been more on my guard and more careful about how I was riding.  I struggled with crookedness for a lot of the ride, and found that I was doing an old habit.  For some reason (I first discovered this on Shorty) I will twist my left hip up and to the side, so that I literally am not putting as much weight on it as I am on my other seat bone.  Don't ask me why, but I'll tell you that sure does not lend itself to straightness.  I haven't done that in awhile, but for some reason I did it during this ride at some points.

In general, I think throughout the ride I could've been more assertive and less timid.  I gave up on some things too easily and got tense too quickly, letting some old habits sneak up on me because it'd been so long since I'd ridden Mariah.  The ride still went well, but I think it could've gone better, know what I mean?

Anyhow, I was the last one to mount. I managed to get my stirrups to the perfect length, so that was nice.  

My trainer didn't give me anything to do, so for a little while I walked around the outside of the arena.  But that didn't last long.  She told me to pick up a rising trot.  The way she was describing what I was to do when I picked up the trot made it sound like I was supposed to be doing trot transitions?  But she didn't directly say that I was to be doing transitions, just told me to pick up a trot.

Anyhow, what she told me about picking up the rising trot was to continue doing what Vivie had been doing when she was riding Mariah.  See, when we ask Mariah to pick up a canter or a trot, she'll do it, but she likes to pin her ears back and let you know she is not happy about it.  So, if she does that, we're to keep our our leg on her until she unpins her ears at least slightly.  Not increase our leg pressure, but just keep the same amount of pressure on her until she gets un-grumpified.  

This is something that we need to do with Mariah, so much so that it takes precedence over other things we might be doing.  If we're asking for trot, and end up in canter, that's fine.  Just so long as we don't let off 

I think I could have been more diligent and on my game about this.  However, I was more diligent about making sure that we were going into the corners, and that she was not crooked.  Not being crooked was more a challenge than it should've been because of my own crooked tendencies.  She'd get huffy about me putting my inside leg on sometimes, but I wouldn't back off and I think we did good at this for the most part.

After I picked up the trot the first time, I just trotted several laps around because my trainer hadn't told me to do transitions.  But then, I figured that I might as well start doing some.  So we did some of those and I think they went well.  Again, I think I could've been more diligent in keeping my leg on until she wasn't grumpy.

 Anyhow, after that, we took a bit of a break with Vivie.  James was gaiting Cordell around the circle of poles and doing a good job for the most part.  Honestly, he was probably doing better than I would, because I haven't ridden Cordell's gaiting in so long...  He did get a bit confused at one point, but finished up good.