Thursday 14th February 2008

I went to the yard today feeling full of anticipation and really looking forward to putting into practice everything I had learned.

I tacked up and went into the little manege where we did the following game. Endy was totally distracted and far too interested in looking at everything around him at first, but after a few minutes he was listening to me and following me around. He is generally stopping as soon as I turn around and will back up when I show him a flat hand but I would say that he is only doing it on sufferance.

I mounted up and off we went. At first I had to make a positive decision not to keep kicking with my legs to make him walk on. Once I got him walking I tried to leave him alone and although he was probably not walking on as fast as I would want him to he was happy sauntering along. I kept quiet and didn't keep clicking and clucking either which in the past I would normally be doing. I spent the whole ride concentrating on my leg position and my hands. I worked at keeping the weight down through the stirrups and onto mainly the little toe. My whole seat position is wrong though. I am definately not sitting on the right place. Poor Endy had to put up with me shuffling around trying to find and optimum place for my bum so that my feet had the weight going through them but I could maintain a contact with my thigh.

I can only keep my knee on the saddle by rotating my lower leg so that my heel is further out away from the horse and my toe is pointing in. I am sure this is right but I cannot sustain it. Unless I positively think about it and use force on my muscles to make them stay there my leg slips back.

Because of all the work I have done in the past on addiction I know that one can retrain a habit by repetition. I have to retrain the muscles of my leg to stay in the new position and I reckon this should take about 3 weeks.

As we neared the end of the ride I found that if I sat more towards my tail bone than my pubic bone then I could maintain the leg in the right place and keep my knee on the saddle. It also felt reasonably comfortable and Endy seemed to be more forward and lighter from behind when I was like this.

My contact with the reins is really paying off and we eventually could get a trot with just one pace of ears back and at one time we actually trotted with no ears back at all. He did get very light and fizzy in the latter part of the ride and I had a job to keep him in walk. When he got like this then I did lots of walk/halt/walk transitions using my voice and my seat and he eventually calmed down and I didnt have to resort to the reins to keep him under control.
At the end I could hear him playing with the bit and he was really enjoying himself.

We had one short canter where he was very settled and I eased him into it slowly and then made no effort to balance him with the reins which is what I have always done before. I let him sort it out and concentrated on my leg. He really was a superstar and I enjoyed every single minute of the ride.

He feels more open and free and light. His mouth is so responsive and I realise that I am so lucky to have this lovely animal and also very lucky that I didnt totally destroy his mouth with my heavy handedness. When I thought he was being strong he was actually trying to get away from me and fight against me.