Unfortunately I'll be going to Italy next week, so this week's chronicles will take a while to materialize. I say it's unfortunate, because it's a work trip 
. I'll be staying on a trade show booth for a week, which is hardly my idea of fun!
Anyway, I'll be seeing you all in a little over a week.
Friday, 27 April
The lesson today was composed of the usual students in Friday evenings. The only differences from the norm was the presence of Lotus and his owner, and the student with whom I had had an "incident" with Astérix was riding Chèrie, a change from the slower horses she is used to. Myself, I was riding Mefisto.
He didn't look very happy when I came up with his saddle and bridle - he had a kind of "Oh, no! Not you again!" expression. While I was trying to bridle him, he made his opinion of me clear by keeping his head high, forcing me to tip-toe around to be able to get the bridle on. That difficulty surpassed we went to the larger arena join up with the others.
The lesson was pretty much the usual, the only exceptional difficulty was that parts of the arena were a little muddy. There was actually an area in a corner a hand deep of water and mud, but that was not the worse. The horses would plod in the mud showing no displeasure of doing so (it wouldn't be a bad idea to fit mud-guards to horses, though ). No, the worse were a couple of places with just a shallow film of mud over hard ground that made it slippery, specially for shod horses. Mefisto, for example, kept slipping throughout the lesson on those places. It was nothing much, just a little stagger, but it always managed to catch me by surprise and distract me from the lesson.
Slips or no slips, the lesson was straightforward with the same old exercises. The difference came up at the end. We had just done a little canter work when Francisco introduced a new exercise. We were to keep ourselves close to each other in sitting trot. Then the first in line would leave the group, canter until A where he would halt the horse. The student should then drop the contact momentarily to assure himself the horse was willingly stopped. The exercise continued with the student gathering the horse and performing a halt to canter transition and repeating everything again at C. With Mefisto I found the halting part more difficult than getting to canter again. In fact, the only difficulty with that was managing not to be left behind! I would gather the reins, set the aids, squeeze with the inside leg and... "Here we gooooooo!"!
Getting Mefisto to halt was a bit more complicated. We tended to overshoot the chosen letter, as he was not keen on stopping when he was having fun going forward! I did manage to improve our halt by using a simple trick - I'd imagine there was a cliff after the letter! That helped me focus and give more precise and concerted aids, besides creating a sense of urgency that helped us obtain better results.
This done with Francisco told, those of us that wanted to, to do a bit of canter in group. He asked us to keep to the outside of the arena and keep it slow and calm because of the ground conditions. I used this time to work in influencing Mefisto's gait, shortening the canter and slowing the tempo - without falling into trot. I used Lotus, cantering calmly in front of us, as a yardstick and tried to increase our distance to him. It worked nicely, but it required a lot of concentration and was therefore tiresome. After a while we had some twenty meters between us. Happy with the results, and tired of the tension, I "decided" to give Mefisto and me a treat. I gave with the reins and asked him forward with the back. Mefisto hardly needed any incitement, with Francisco's indications completely forgotten, down the path we went chasing Lotus! Our "dash" lasted until Francisco, looking from the student he was talking to in the centre, half jokingly, half sarcastically, asked me if I was in a hurry! I felt like asking if anyone had seen my brain, as I surely must have had misplaced it somewhere twenty seconds before. This was one of those cases of "intellectual flatulence" I guess ...
Pedro Fortunato
Lisbon, Portugal
. I'll be staying on a trade show booth for a week, which is hardly my idea of fun!Anyway, I'll be seeing you all in a little over a week.
Friday, 27 April
The lesson today was composed of the usual students in Friday evenings. The only differences from the norm was the presence of Lotus and his owner, and the student with whom I had had an "incident" with Astérix was riding Chèrie, a change from the slower horses she is used to. Myself, I was riding Mefisto.
He didn't look very happy when I came up with his saddle and bridle - he had a kind of "Oh, no! Not you again!" expression. While I was trying to bridle him, he made his opinion of me clear by keeping his head high, forcing me to tip-toe around to be able to get the bridle on. That difficulty surpassed we went to the larger arena join up with the others.
The lesson was pretty much the usual, the only exceptional difficulty was that parts of the arena were a little muddy. There was actually an area in a corner a hand deep of water and mud, but that was not the worse. The horses would plod in the mud showing no displeasure of doing so (it wouldn't be a bad idea to fit mud-guards to horses, though
). No, the worse were a couple of places with just a shallow film of mud over hard ground that made it slippery, specially for shod horses. Mefisto, for example, kept slipping throughout the lesson on those places. It was nothing much, just a little stagger, but it always managed to catch me by surprise and distract me from the lesson.Slips or no slips, the lesson was straightforward with the same old exercises. The difference came up at the end. We had just done a little canter work when Francisco introduced a new exercise. We were to keep ourselves close to each other in sitting trot. Then the first in line would leave the group, canter until A where he would halt the horse. The student should then drop the contact momentarily to assure himself the horse was willingly stopped. The exercise continued with the student gathering the horse and performing a halt to canter transition and repeating everything again at C. With Mefisto I found the halting part more difficult than getting to canter again. In fact, the only difficulty with that was managing not to be left behind! I would gather the reins, set the aids, squeeze with the inside leg and...
"Here we gooooooo!"!Getting Mefisto to halt was a bit more complicated. We tended to overshoot the chosen letter, as he was not keen on stopping when he was having fun going forward! I did manage to improve our halt by using a simple trick - I'd imagine there was a cliff after the letter! That helped me focus and give more precise and concerted aids, besides creating a sense of urgency that helped us obtain better results.
This done with Francisco told, those of us that wanted to, to do a bit of canter in group. He asked us to keep to the outside of the arena and keep it slow and calm because of the ground conditions. I used this time to work in influencing Mefisto's gait, shortening the canter and slowing the tempo - without falling into trot. I used Lotus, cantering calmly in front of us, as a yardstick and tried to increase our distance to him. It worked nicely, but it required a lot of concentration and was therefore tiresome. After a while we had some twenty meters between us. Happy with the results, and tired of the tension, I "decided" to give Mefisto and me a treat. I gave with the reins and asked him forward with the back. Mefisto hardly needed any incitement, with Francisco's indications completely forgotten, down the path we went chasing Lotus! Our "dash" lasted until Francisco, looking from the student he was talking to in the centre, half jokingly, half sarcastically, asked me if I was in a hurry
! I felt like asking if anyone had seen my brain, as I surely must have had misplaced it somewhere twenty seconds before. This was one of those cases of "intellectual flatulence" I guess ...Pedro Fortunato
Lisbon, Portugal