This week I was off from work so it seemed like a good time to get a lesson in. It had been a while since my last one; other events and activities kept getting in the way. Bestie hasn't been ridden much recently for the same reason. I had a hockey tournament this past weekend, so I rode Friday, but then didn't ride again until Tuesday, right before my Wednesday lesson.
When all was said and done, I ended up being on her for about an hour and ten minutes ... slightly (!) more than the half hour originally scheduled. We trotted a bit at the outset, then Caitlin set up some markers to follow for patterns. But we started doing turns on the forehand and turns on the haunches and never got back to the patterns.
After about 40 minutes of mostly unsuccessful attempts at these turns, I called it quits, feeling like my head was going to explode. For some reason, none of the aids necessary for either movement were intuitive to me, and flip-flopping from practicing forehand to practicing haunches over and over just got them all jumbled in my head. And if they were jumbled in my head, I can only imagine what Bestie was thinking ... most likely, something along the lines of "what the heck is she asking me??"
I used to do turns on the haunches with Dude, and I was remembering it as a fairly simple maneuver. I finally told Caitlin I just needed to take a break and read about it at home to get it straight in my head. But then, to complicate things, one article I read online said that turning on the forehand is a waste of time; that generally riders are trying to get horses OFF their forehand, so why waste time teaching them to turn on it? Or maybe that uncomplicates things, giving me an excuse to be DONE with forehand turns. :)
The bottom line is that I need to get the how-to's straight in my head before I get back on Bestie and make her crazy with my fumbling.
2 comments:
I'm gonna counter turn-on-the-fore being a waste of time. Granted that t-o-t-hind requires the horse to be able to get off it's forehand, but the horse needs to develop a good deal of muscle and topline to do so. T-o-t-F from my experience, is a great way to work on getting your horse to react to soft leg and seat aids. I found that my horse is finally understanding moving away from my leg and into my seat WITHOUT stepping forward or back (passive rein means don't step).
My coach also used it to teach me the aids for leg-yielding (and subsequently shoulder-fore and shoulder-in), because they're very similar just with forward movement added in.
So for me, if I could get him to t-o-t-f successfully, I could trot him off and ask for t-o-t-f while moving and suddenly get leg-yield. WITHOUT having to stress at the trot about my aids because I memorized them at the VERY slow t-o-t-f!
Thanks for sharing your experiences. For me, as a new rider, it's great to hear what works for others, as well as the "why" of things. I think I had reached saturation point the other day - after a good little session of patterns today, I asked Bestie to turn on the haunches, and she did it awesomely. I'm happy to take success in baby steps!
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