2023 & 2024 Riding Journey

#26 A Wow Moment on Mariah

For this lesson, only Vivie came to ride in it with me, and we rode in the indoor arena.  Vivie got to ride Rugar and I was on Mariah.

My stirrups on this saddle had been unrolled (most likely for a person with longer legs than mine), so I had the choice between too long stirrups and a little shorter than I'd like.  I chose to go the little shorter route and it was a good thing, because we did some jumping.

After mounting, I walked around some laps in the arena and experimented a little with getting Mariah to give at the poll.  She was very good about this and I had her in a lengthened out frame before my trainer spoke to me.

She told me to start in on trotting and if that was good to do some canter.  We wanted to keep the warm up short because she had to leave right after this lesson, and she wanted to make sure we had time to do some jumping.

So I just trotted around for a little bit on direction and then changed directions to trot the other way.  Mariah had a lovely trot going, not too fast and not to slow, and I was enjoying it.

Then my trainer told me to start posting slower but close my lower leg against her.  I did as told and for the first time, I really felt a horse lengthen its stride while maintaining the same speed.  Instead of speeding up, Mariah let her stride get longer.  I could feel the change and it was pretty neat.  My trainer was pleased with it and maybe now I know a way to ask for that.  Before, I wasn't entirely sure.

Soon afterwards I asked for our first canter transition, and my trainer was pleased with it because we kept the same contact.  I didn't yank on her face, she didn't try to get away from my hand or anything like that, we kept the same contact we had in trot throughout the transition.  It felt lovely, and her canter was also lovely.

Since the canter was so nice and didn't really need any work, my trainer told me to do some trot to canter transitions with the aim of them being as nice as the first one.  

For the most part they were, except for the fact that Mariah caught onto to what we were doing and would have a speedier trot in anticipation of the canter transition, and would also sometimes be resistant to coming back to trot.  So I would sometimes do a circle to get a nicer trot.  But the transitions themselves continued to be lovely.

After I came down to walk, my trainer said she liked how I was staying 'with' Mariah in the transition.  I was neither leaping ahead of her nor lagging behind but staying in time with her.  My trainer said that was something that she could not teach me, that it was something I would have learn and figure out for myself.  It was a nice compliment to hear.  I think what really helped me with that was when I asked for canter, Mariah was right there to do it for me.  There was no rushing, no throwing a hissy fit, just a clean and quick transition.

We did the same thing going the other direction and those ones were nice too, though I don't think we did as many.  Mariah began to settle down in the trot, instead of getting speedy in anticipation of the next transition, so my trainer had me bring her down to walk and call it good.

Then it was time to do some jumping.  The jump my trainer set up was held up on one end by the arena panel fence, and on the other by the mounting block, as my trainer didn't really have anything else to use at the moment.  To begin with, she set the one end of the pole on the lowest step of the mounting block, which made it lower that end and less intimidating as a warm up jump.  She said I could choose the direction I wanted to go.

I ended up going to the left, which now I think I shouldn't have chosen because it is our harder side.  But oh well, on we went.

It didn't take Mariah but one jump to figure out what we were doing, and her trot got faster.  I didn't hang onto her though, just rode it out and kept on jumping.  My trainer told me after two or three more jumps that I needed to stop throwing myself forward, because she was getting faster and faster to compensate for it.