Well. Today was an interesting summary of the pleasures and pitfalls of riding Melvyn. The pleasures... well, shes Melvyn. When she has her move head on, she moves really well, goes nicely up and down the gears and does everything she can to help. Which leads to the pitfalls... madam knows the exercises, so starts trying to do them semi-independently of your cues. You can either choose to roll with it (not really for the best, long term), or try holding her up until you ask her to do things - which risks her getting her not move head on. Today she opted to go up to the canter stage of an exercise before I was either settled or asking, which resulted in me bumping the saddle and her responding with a small buck, but we got there in the end, kinda. We also had the joy of stage fright, when she suddenly found herself at the head of the ride, which almost provoked a throwing an anchor out style stop, but I did manage to keep her at least putting one foot in front of the other. The suggestion of the whole ride going into canter with me and Melvyn at the head provoked an involuntary oh shit ! from me, as between her stage fright and my rubbish canter cue I had visions of a ride of ponies going over the top of us, but thankfully even if all you get is Mels trot speeding up and lengthening that takes her far enough from the ponies that all is well. It really doesnt sound as much fun as it actually was, but fun was definitely had ! Now back to sounding like Im trying to remove a lung by coughing it out. Bah.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 12:54:36 +0000
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