2023 & 2024 Riding Journey

#21 Jumping Mariah

This lesson was my fourth time of jumping in a row.  Wow.  That's a lot of jumping.

Mariah was more grumpy when it came to tacking up.  I probably should've slapped her at some point, but I didn't. 

Only James came for a lesson, and he rode Cordell.  We had the lesson in the outdoor as per usual.

I walked about a lap, and then my trainer started giving me instructions for the exercise she wanted me to do.  As she began to talk to me, she was behind me, and since I was probably going to change the direction anyway, I turned Mariah around to face her.  It was such a nice turn, she was so with me!  My trainer really liked it too, and it tied into the exercise she was going to have do.

First she said she wanted me to weave a broken line going up the fence line, aka zig zag to and from the fence line.  She wanted me to do this while my reins were long enough that I had no / barely any contact with Mariah, and she wanted me to do it until I felt like she was really listening to my body.  Like she was really in sync with my body and following it freely.  (Another girl had done this with Mariah yesterday and it'd gone well.)

Then, when Mariah was doing well at that, I was to add something into the picture.  When it came time for her to turn to, say, the right, I was to try to feel just before / as Mariah was lifting that right forefoot and ask her right then to take a step with it.  If it was timed right, that extra step would be what made the turn.  If she got this, and took that extra step, then I was to let her walk straight as a reward.

This is the very beginning of turning the forehand.  Yesterday, they'd worked on moving her hindquarters, now with me we were going to do the forehand.  

Now, I've haven't really done things where you feel when a horse is about to take a step.  My trainer knew this.  She said that with this exercise, I could try as many times as I wanted and not have to worry about messing it up or frustrating the horse.  So that was reassuring.

One of the things that I want to learn to use really well is weight aids.  It's such a subtle, and yet if done right, effective way of guiding a horse.  So I was glad to experiment with it.

I figured out that it didn't take much.  Like, you might feel you have to really step down into that stirrup to get the horse to turn, but you don't.  It doesn't take much at all, especially if you use your whole body in alignment.  Turning right was easier for me than turning left, I think it's also Mariah's preferred direction.

If I would just sit up, and straight, and as even as possible, then it didn't take much to affect her course and get a good turn out of her.  I've always known that Mariah is sensitive to those types of aids, it's one of the things I've enjoyed about riding her, but which can wreak havoc if you're crooked.

After we were doing well at broken line, it was time to make an attempt at asking her to take that extra step.  I don't know how I picked up on when I needed to ask her to take that extra step, but somehow I realized I needed to ask it not when I felt her front foot lifting, because that wouldn't give me enough time, but when I felt her bearing down on her other front foot.  That would give me enough time to 'catch her' as she was lifting the foot I wanted to step to the side with.

Now, my trainer didn't say anything to me pretty much the whole time I was doing this.  So I wasn't as sure as I would've liked to have been that I was getting what I was asking for.  But I was feeling something different from Mariah, her turns felt more like I thought the stepping to the side would feel like, so I rewarded her several times.  Honestly, I got more right responses that I thought I would.  Stepping to the left was harder for both of us, as per usual.

(My trainer may have said something to me at one point about "Having some success, aren't you?" before the end of the exercise, but I don't remember that for sure.  She may have said it at the end to me.)