Worth the wait (for me, maybe not for you ;))

Friday morning Gayle called to let me know that she'd been kicked in the knee by her son's pony the night before so she was running late. My 10 o'clock lesson ended up being at 11, and I was a little worried about the heat, but typically once I get on and start riding I don't notice. Gayle brought out one of her Prestige saddles for me to ride in and Pro and I both loved it. I think it'd have been a good lesson either way, but in this saddle everything felt easy for me, and I think even for Pro. I was a bit concerned at first because it had HUGE thigh blocks and I've never ridden in anything that came even close. They were set far enough up and forward that they didn't really come into play except when we first started trotting and Gayle said to use them to help me do some half-halts. Other than that I never even noticed them being there.

We started off getting him to flex at the poll with the magical not-to-be-explained-on-the-internet trick Kate learned last week. Because of all the ligament damage in his head/neck from being cranked around as a baby, his poll and neck are too flexible. So I have to be very careful to get him to flex correctly and not over flex. Pro had already tuned me out by the time I asked him to walk off so I'd flex at the halt till I had his attention and his energy was pointed forward and ask him to walk off. If he went immediately to pieces then I'd halt, regather him, and ask again. After about 5-10 minutes we were able to walk off straight and engaged. With that as a start it was pretty easy to get him in front of me and thanks to the saddle and the engagement he rounded up with his back at the walk. Once I had him going forward with impulsion we worked on collecting that energy. So I had to get him out in front of me, but then once I had "forward" I had to collect him back so that I had "up". Part of doing that was giving him space to bring his withers up in front of me. Gayle had me shorten my reins a notch by moving my hands up to the next notch, not by bringing the notch back to me. That gave Pro space between my seat and my hands to come up. Pro spent a lot of the ride trying to convince me that it really was much better to do things his way, but luckily didn't have as much success getting me to dive with him or monkey with his face. I wish I could explain exactly what I did, but Gayle gave us a lot of time to just figure things out with the new saddle and me trying to not give in to the dark side, so a lot of stuff was little tiny adjustments that wouldn't make much sense on the blog ;).

We trotted both directions and worked on keeping his rhythm the same, nice and steady, but pushing him forward with NO rushing. I had to fight to keep him straight as he kept wanting to bulge (either out to the right or in to the left). Gayle had me straighten him a tiny bit at a time. Every time he'd get straighter and stretch down, I'd send him forward. The idea here was that he can't go forward and under himself unless he gets his front feet out of the way. So when he'd straighten, I'd ask for forward and get it, and THEN he couldn't really bulge as much anymore because his back feet were in the way. I love playing tricks like that on him! At the end he was taking these HUGE ground covering strides and we were all having a blast. Pro thought he was hot stuff, I was having fun because it was going so well and he felt so awesome, and Gayle was happy for both of us. She says a lot of people get intimidated by all the power when the horse is really traveling forward. I think I'm addicted instead. No worries I'll be trying to shut his gaits down. Now I just have to try to recreate it next time I ride. This heat has been giving me too many excuses to not ride...