2022 Riding Journey

#5 Lots of Little Jumps

When I arrived, my first job was to gather feed sacks, then take the hay I'd scooped up and put in Riggs & Mistletoe's pen, and go catch Mariah for my lesson.

After dumping the hay in Riggs & Mistletoe's pen under the shelter so it wouldn't blow away, my trainer interrupted my taking the wheelbarrow back to the tack shed.  She wanted me to scoop up the hay Sea Monster had left in the arena.

I petted the big gray cat Obitus while waiting for my trainer to bring me the hay rake.  He's such a lover cat XD  I finished scooping up the hay, then went to fetch Mariah.  

Mariah has changed, my trainer told me as I was tacking her up.  She had been less grumpy the last few days.  7 months of work had finally lead to a change.  

And yeah, she was less grumpy.  She didn't hardly pin her ears at me when I was grooming her.  When I tacked her up, she did try to bite the fence.  My trainer told me to just slap her when she did that.  It was fine if she licked it, but no biting. 

Sally came for her lesson as well, and it was nice to ride in the morning with her again.  She rode Cordell. 

When I went to adjust my stirrups, I had to fiddle with them a lot, because they'd been unrolled.  See, before, the stirrup leathers were 'rolled' around the stirrup, but now they go straight through like normal.  Therefore I wasn't sure how long my stirrups should be.  

Mariah only gave me a little trouble with mounting, and I think it was my fault because I was unsure.  But we mounted without too much trouble.

I immediately knew that my stirrups were uneven, the right one was longer than I wanted.  I stopped Mariah after moving away from the block and went to fiddle with it.  But Mariah started forwards again.

I berate myself that I let her get away with it before my trainer told me not too.  *smacks forehead* I know better than that.  That's something you never let Mariah or Lily do.  Any horse, for that matter.  

Anyhow I stopped her.  After telling my trainer what the deal was with my stirrup, she said I could go around the arena without my stirrups for a little while.  So that's how I ended up doing no stirrups for the first time in months :P  

It wasn't hard, and I felt fairly safe despite being on Mariah.  I went around the arena a lap or two with her on a long rein.

When my trainer summoned me over to adjust my stirrup for me, and I went to halt, it felt different without stirrups.  My trainer pointed out that I was over arching my back, as I didn't have a stirrup to push down against.  This wasn't going to help Mariah halt, as it was an entirely new sensation to her, so she didn't know what it meant.

  And that's how, after Trainer adjusted my stirrup, I still did some more no stirrup work, this time interspersed with halts.  

Getting the feeling of halting without stirrups was harder than I liked.  That is, halting with my body.  Apparently I've really been relying on my stirrups for that, which is annoying to me.  So, I'll be working on that a little.  

After two or three laps doing that, my trainer told me to pick up my stirrups and start doing walk-trot transitions.  Inwardly, when she said this, I kinda went "Eeeee".  In the past, I've struggled with fast horses like Mariah, and now some of those problems reared their ugly heads again, because I let them get to me.  

The main problem was getting Mariah to come down to the walk and stay in the walk.  Back when I was riding Gator, this was also a problem for me, and it's been with Lily too.  I'm just so worried they'll shoot back up into trot.

Thus, I tense up, which only serves to make the problem a ton worse.  And my solution to the whole thing is to 'hang' on my horse's mouth.  Ironically, this only makes them try harder to break into trot.