2023 & 2024 Riding Journey

#35 Riding Nova

So, I got to ride Nova for this lesson!  I've rode her last week, (not in a lesson), and liked her.  She is a sweet, nicely built black Quarter Horse mare.  

Vivie and James were there for the lesson.  Vivie was on Mariah and James on Cordell.  We rode in the indoor arena.

The thing about Nova right now is that she tends to do this walk where she doesn't quite set her feet on the ground.  It's bouncy and jiggy, like Lily the mustang mare's used to be, except not as bad.  My first ride on her had been just at the walk, and the goal was to get her to settle into her walk.  One of the ways to do this was to turn her in a tight circle, which would make her have to put her feet on the ground.  So I'd done that, and things had gotten better.  My trainer had said that the next time they'd ridden Nova, her walk had been better, so she figured we'd come to an agreement when I was riding her.  It was a nice compliment to hear, that she had been able to tell I'd made a change in a horse.

She said that she didn't think Nova would have that walk when I got on her this time, but if she did, I was to do the same tight circles, only letting her off the circle when she settled. 

I mounted up, and as soon as I was in the saddle, Nova tried to walk off.  I stopped her and made her stand for a moment before having her go on.  Just walking off like that is not ideal, even if they do wait for when you're in the saddle.

I walked around on a rein long enough that I didn't really have contact with her.  Her walk was a little tense at first, but I waited, and it settled more.  

My trainer had been talking with Vivie about getting Mariah to stretch out.  She said that when Mariah did so, you needed to push her forward and get a longer walk stride from her.  She said the same was true for Nova, and that you could tell when Nova was trying to stretch by the fact that she would actually curl her head up instead of pushing it out and down.  She just isn't sure where to go with it yet.  So I was to push my hands forward like I was pushing a wheelbarrow and urge her forward with my leg.

Sure enough, that helped Nova to stretch out more.  After these laps of walking, my trainer told me to start doing walk / trot transitions.  Since we'd done all these laps of walk in one direction, I changed directions before starting the transitions.  My trainer said the goal was that Nova knew we wanted to trot when we asked her.

Nova's trot was pretty slow, though it did speed up a little as we went on.  It didn't take her long to become sensitive to my leg.  My trainer told me we wanted her to settle into the walk between the trot transitions, so that was the next thing to work on.  In the beginning, Nova would sometimes start into a jigging trot.  I started to get tense and fight against her to keep her in the walk, but remembered not to fall into that trap, and as things went on she settled more.  

My trainer told me to push my hands more forward when asking her for the trot, like I was told to do when I first started taking lessons.  That helped Nova get up into the trot better, because I didn't catch her in the mouth and she had room to move forward.

Going this direction, to the right or clockwise, I found that I had a harder time keeping Nova straight.  I think this was due to some crookedness in my body of some sort, and I fiddled around to try to fix it.  I came close at some points, and things would get better, but I didn't ever quite hit the nail on the head.  It's just something that I need to work on.  I think a part of it was that I wasn't putting weight, or enough weight, on my right seat bone as I should.

At the end, when things were looking good but Nova had bunched up a little, my trainer asked me if I wanted to let her walk out for a bit, or see about doing these transitions on a longer rein.  I wanted to try them on a longer rein, so we let the reins out really long and tried it.  Things went well, and Nova didn't do her jigging thing, so that was good.

I think after that my trainer told me to come in the middle of the arena and let her have a break, or walk her out on a long rein.  I tried taking a halted break, but Nova didn't want to stand, so we ended up walking.

After that, my trainer had us come into the center of the arena while Vivie and James used the rail.  I was to piddle around on Nova with reins to the buckle (literally holding the buckle) and do some one rein stops on her.  This way, Nova had no contact with me until I took hold of the rein on one side to do the stop.  It wasn't too bad, though the long reins felt odd.  My trainer said that was the version of it Nova needed, but she didn't say why that I remember.

So, we did that for a bit, and it went well.  Then my trainer told me to pick up the canter on her along the rail.  Vivie was off the rail but James was on it, so I'd have to be careful not to run into him, and I was to always be the one to pass him to the inside, he was to stay on the rail.  My trainer said to make sure we were both going the same direction.

The one thing my trainer told me to do was steer through the corners.  She said that Nova had gotten better about the fence, but I just needed to make sure I was the one steering through the corners.  She said I was doing that more anyway, (as opposed to letting the fence make the corner for me), but that I just needed to make sure I was doing it.

I cantered first going to the right, or clockwise, around the arena.  We picked up the canter on the right lead with little trouble, but Nova's canter was bouncier than I expected.  We went several laps around, my trainer told me I could stop when I felt like she wasn't trying to come down to trot on her own.

I realized that the crookedness was causing me to sit against the motion of Nova's canter.  So I abruptly tried to change it and place weight on that inside seat bone like I needed to.  This jarred Nova enough that she dropped out of the canter to trot.  I thought about going back to the canter, but choose to go down to walk instead.  Looking back, I probably should've made her go back to the canter, but it was too late.

We walked around some, then it was time to canter the other direction.  Again, the transition didn't give us too much trouble.  Going this direction, to the left, the canter was better for two reasons.  One was that Nova decided to hold herself up better.  The second was that I was sitting with the motion of her canter like I should, so I sat it better.

As the canter went on, it got better, and so we came to walk.  My trainer told Vivie (and later me) that the canter I'd had, in the beginning but especially at the end, was the canter we needed to make a circle on her if we wanted to.  Trying to make a circle when she was pushing too forward onto her forehand wouldn't be good.  

After a little walk around, my trainer told me I could come in the middle and dismount, so I did.  It was, overall, a good lesson though a simple one.

Actual lesson 11/14/2023