1/5/08 - Inside hand, Return of the Whip, Shows

This lesson started with my question about open hips - is it "right" to have hips that move like a nordic track (i.e. the two seat bones slide backward and forward like your feet on a nordic track) or it is right to have a soft belly and your hips sort of roll forward and move with the horse? Bob said it is moving WITH the horse that is correct. Pushing your seat bones backwards and forwards, especially when you do them one at a time, makes the horse off balance. You follow the horse, except when you are driving him with your seat, in which case you push, but you push equally with both sides. So even though I have felt both Willig and Mercury step bigger and out when I am moving my seat (nordic track), I am actually making them have to balance themselves.
The soft belly is easy to do when I am relaxed and laughing, but when I focus and try to do it, it goes away.

Miracle #2 from today's lesson was using my inside hand. I complained that I am still having trouble getting Willig to bend to the inside. It turns out it's because I leave my inside rein loose and floppy, so each half halt to the outside is actually turning his head to the outside. Duh. This will work well with last lesson's trick of holding onto the saddle pad - so long as I also keep the inside rein tight enough, we'll solve the head to the outside problem.

Willig has been a little slow - I thought it was because Bob was working him, and Bob thinks it is partly becuase of all the meds for the hives. So today we returned to the whip. There are two things I learned - first, keep the whip to the inside, because I have the rail on the outside to keep him in line. Second, use the whip on his shoulder (and tell him with a light tap that I have it), instead of on his butt. That prevents me from pulling on the rein when I move my hand back to tap him.

So, again today I begged Bob to stop because my brain was full. I already am almost at capacity with all the things I have to remember just to ride him around, so I can really only take one new thing per lesson to work on.

The most important thing to do right now is maintain his impulsion, because once he loses that we will have problems. For example, if I use my legs all the time, even when he's already moving forward, he'll start to ignore my legs and then when Bob uses his legs before an enormous jump, Willig will ignore him. So I also worked on holding my leg out stiff and not using them to tell him to go. He responded really well to the whip, but I had problems getting my legs to obey me, just like with the tap lesson.

We also talked about show expectations. Bob wants to take him to a couple at novice, then ride him training level next summer at the recognized shows. The following year, he wants to take him prelim.

Once again, the hives are almost completely gone. I thought they looked a little worse on Thursday, then better Friday, and almost gone today. The vet had us increase his pills from 10 to 15, twice a day, and I am supposed to call her Monday to tell her how he is and find out what to do next. I hope we can start cutting him back. We are going to put him on garlic and rosehips, Missing Link, and then have a homeopathic remedy. It's almost time for him to start eating oats anyway.