i was on Ruby, who gave me the usual fussy attitude while i groomed and tacked her. (myself!) she only tried to kick me twice, and halfheartedly at that. i've got her antics down to a science though; and my trick is to make her keep her weight on the back foot that i'm next to. if she cocks the hoof on the side i'm grooming then i push her until she shifts weight. that way she can't get me! i know all her signs too; gnashing teeth, pinned ears. such a fuss budget.
anyway, Megan was the trainer (as with all wednesdays) and is notoriously hard to please. i mean this in the best sense, because when she does give you praise, you know you really killed it and that she is sincere. diring the warmup Ruby decided to blow off my left side a few times, but with enough play on the bit, she began to come round.
now with a bar rein, i have literally no way to adjust the contact, other than to roll up the bar to shorten the rein. Megan insists constantly that i shorten and shorten the reins, to get leverage so she'll come into the bridle. however, when i choke up like that, i've noticed that ruby gets more aggravated and less likely to relax. therefore i much prefer riding her with a looser rein. Megan repeated that i would not be able to get an acceptable frame with the reins like that, so i told her that after the warmup if ruby wasn't round i would roll up the bar. however, almost the moment i loosened the contact a bit, she started to flex and get into a frame. we warmed up in walk, trot and canter, did some leg yielding, and made sure the horses were supple and listening. then Megan told Casey and myself to do our test (which i hadn't as of yet memorized!)
this is Training level test 1, and i was instructed to watch Casey do it and then do it myself. i was slightly nervy, just because a)it was dark out and Ruby was fairly uppy, b)Ruby had been leaning on my arm a bit and i was tired, and c)i hadn't the slightest idea what the test was. anyway, i watched and thought i had a grasp on it, so as Casey finished, megan told me to warmup with some canter and get Ruby listening and round again, and then to start.
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| collected canter |
as soon as we entered at A, i knew we were on point. Ruby was arching her neck and back and reaching under with her hocks. i could feel her power collected and at my disposal. we proceeded through the test with megan calling out the next moves once in awhile. Ruby picked up both correct leads at the canter, stayed bent to the inside AND round as a rubber ball through the entire test. when we halted and saluted at X after we finished, Megan praised me to the highest i've heard. she complimented the quality of all my gaits, my circles, and finished by saying that it's the best test she's ever seen me ride. that this is the first ride she's seen from me where i kept ruby in a frame the entire time.
the one area where megan made me really school ruby was our downward transition from canter to trot. she comes down like a freight train and it takes a massive amount of strength to collect her trot afterward, so when she would barge through my attempts to halfhalt her, megan had me repeatedly canter then trot until she responded to my aides and did a decent transition. the overall tone though was that of praise, and i felt giddy with pride and happiness. Megan told me that if i rode my test like that in the show next month i'd be ahead of the game, and that we could start talking about going to a rated show after this one IF i rode that well! it would be my first rated show and a huge move for me, so you can imagine how excited i was.
the icing on the cake came as i was dismounting and getting ready to put the horse away. as i ran up my stirrups and loosened the girth, Megan said to me: "Elle, one last thing. just so you know, it's YOU. this is the same mare you've been working with all along; YOU have changed as a rider."
i'll never forget those words coming from Megan!
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