2022 Riding Journey

#17 Sitting Trot for Mariah

I rode Mariah for this lesson, and if the last lesson was all about circles, this one was all about transitions. 

When I mounted up, my trainer didn't give me anything to do right away.  Given there was three other people in the lesson, that's understandable.  There was John on Cordell, Vivie on Riggs, and another girl I'll call Anna on Sage.  

When I mounted, I could feel that Mariah kinda wanted to barge through the bit.  So, I started doing halts while holding the tension on the reins until she backed up.  That helped, and it wasn't very hard to do for her.  She was just a tad pushy but that was quickly fixed.

I began doing circles in each corner, but only got two done before my trainer told me to put her in trot.  She said I could start in rising trot, but my goal would be to get her down to a sitting trot.  I could use circles, if needed, or other tools. 

The main thing for me was to stay loose.  Like, my trainer told me several times to be so loose that I might just fall off the horse.  That goes against everything in my instincts, especially when I'm on a fast horse I want to slow down and stay slow.  

One way to do this was bend my knees so that my feet were lifted out of the stirrups, and thus my weight was transferred more onto my seat.  For Mariah especially it seems, this really helps her to slow down and stay that way.  

Also, my trainer told me to remember to 'roll' with my hips from side to side with her.  See, when a horse trots, it's barrel goes from side to side.  Not very much, but it really helps if you let your hips go with that motion, if you 'roll' from side to side with it.  She also said I might have sit more on my seat bones, and slump with my tailbone a little to help feel it.  That felt very wrong XD

I had to fight the urge to 'hang' on the reins as well.  That only makes Mariah want to go faster, rather than any slower.  But I also had to remember that I could use the reins to slow her down, so long as I let her go when she did.  

Eventually we got some good sitting trot out of her.  Once that happened, my trainer told me I could start posting and essentially 'let her go'.  She could go just about as fast as she wanted, but of course she couldn't canter.

When I started posting and the speed of her trot picked up, I had to resist the urge to try to slow her down.  It was so fast!  

Mariah wasn't happy, she had her ears pinned back and was grumpy about it.  My trainer said this was because her hindlegs were reaching under and pushing more than they usually do, and Mariah simply didn't know what to make of it XD  Mariah always gets grumpy when pushed out of her comfort zone / trying something new.  Trainer told me to just keep on trotting until she unpinned her ears and then bring her back to walk.  

It didn't take too long for Mariah to realize she didn't have to be so grumpy, and so we took a break. After that break, my trainer told me to go back to doing the same thing again.  Start in rising trot, bring her to sitting trot for awhile, then extend on into rising trot again.  

This second round was slightly better than the first one, mainly because I knew what we were doing.  I still struggled with the sitting trot of course.  But once we got it, and maintained it for a bit, I put her back into rising trot.

Once again she was grumpy, but again it didn't take long for her to come to her senses.  We took another break.  

I can't remember for sure if it was on this break or another one, but my trainer, when I standing there with Vivie and Anna beside me while John was gaiting Cordell around, said something that stuck out to me.

One horse trainer that both she and I admire, who lives nearby, told her that it was better to not just say 'no' to a horse.  Riggs was trying to wander over to Mariah, see, and so my trainer had told her Vivie to back her up. 

See, if you say 'no', to a horse, that doesn't really tell them anything.  You can just say, 'no, no, no' all you want but sometimes it'll do good.  But it might do better if you gave them something to do in the place of what they want to do.  Instead of saying, 'No, don't step forward,"  You could say "Why don't you come back up with me?"  This is more profitable than just saying 'no.'

We tried the trotting deal again, but I don't think I got up to the stage of the rising trot before my trainer told me to come to walk?  I'm not sure, but I think that's what happened.

We did do some cantering on Mariah.  My trainer told me that Mariah likes to, when transitioning into the canter, she like, lurches back and then launches herself into it.  It feels terrible.  What we would like for her to do is keep the smooth flow of motion in the switch of the transition.  

I chose to do the canter on a circle in the lower half of the arena so that I could hopefully stay out of the other riders way.  I didn't pick the best spot though, so it wasn't our best canter circles.  One time we broke into trot and had to readjust to get the canter again.  

My trainer told me to put my weight to the outside to keep Mariah from drifting, which helped.  Kinda like I did for Candy Sue when I rode here.  

Our better canter work was going the other direction in the top half of the arena.  I think our transitions were good, less lurchy, but I'm not sure.  

And yeah, that was my lesson on Mariah.  No jumping this round, just a lot of work on sitting and rising trot.  She's really improving, before, if we'd tried that, she'd have exploded XD

Actual lesson 6/7/2022

Update to this section:  As I was writing out entry #18, I kept thinking that I had jumped with Mariah recently.  But I couldn't remember what lesson it was.  I believe it was this lesson, but I'm not sure?  I could be missing an entire lesson XD  But I'm going to stick it here anyway, because I'm pretty sure it actually was this lesson that I jumped her.  

From what I remember of this jumping, it wasn't bad.  But there was a lot of it, because of various imperfections that kept us from ending the lesson until we got a 'good' jump to end it on.  

We actually missed the jump three or more times. But my trainer wasn't perturbed about it.  Actually, she was quite pleased that Mariah was letting me back her up and then take her over it without any complaint!  

In fact, that's what made her happy about our last jump.  When I came around, she had me put on my rein (which one I'm not sure), as we went to the jump to keep her from avoiding it.  

Instead of throwing a hissy fit, or getting upset or anxious,  Mariah worked through the pressure I was putting on her.  She accepted it, tolerated it.  And that, my trainer said, is what she'll need to do when little kids ride her.  So Trainer had me end it right there to reward her.  

So yeah, there you go.  We had some problems with jumping, but nothing like when Mariah first came here.