This has been a slow week for me since I have not gotten back my energy after being sick with a head cold weeks ago.  By the time I get to the stables, the horses are groomed, tacked up, and I get to the ring and mount I am already tired, and after the second trot I am exhausted, wrung out and hung out to dry.

Wednesday I got my lesson on Mick, using my new EZ-Fit treeless saddle of course!  This time I decided to go back to the Mullen mouth bits since I seem to have found my front to back balance in the saddle.  Mick was fine in the bit, he does not seem to think the Mullen mouth snaffle as any great deal after being in the cross-under bridle.  This was a relief to me, though I am not in any way an adherent of the bitless, treeless, and barefoot brigade for the last few weeks I had been riding bitless, treeless and barefoot!  It sure was nice to be “talking” to the horses’ tongues again, while horses probably prefer bitless for the riders who have unsteady, tense and uneducated hands, they seem to prefer mild bits in good, supple, educated and light hands.  I think this is because the horse’s tongue can cushion the action of the bit some if it is allowed to.

This lesson I had enough energy for two small trots and Debbie got to see Mick’s new, improved trot.  It is hard to describe, Mick does not raise his head at all out of the old-timey hunter head carriage with his nose stuck out, but all of a sudden, with just the change to the treeless saddle, a person on the ground can SEE the energy from the pushing-off hind foot flow through his spine, ending up with elevating the forehand a little so that he looks like he is trotting uphill instead of downhill on flat ground.  The only time I’ve gotten an equivalent trot from him under a treed saddle was when I was using the Pelham, when I fingered the curb rein alternating with using my legs.  Of course this extra push makes his sitting trot harder to sit, and adding in the fact that my seat bones are further back in the saddle where the back moves up and down more, it just means that my nice seat at the sitting trot is no longer as nice as it was before.  I’ll have to practice it more when I get my energy back.  Of course Mick’s sitting trot has always been more pounding than that of the other horses since I have yet to convince him that it is much more comfortable to relax his back some at the trot.  Right now instead of giving my brain and spine extra hard thumps I’d just rather post.  That way I can avoid all the thumps, I can be sure that I am not hurting my nervous system, and I can deprive Mick of an excuse to tighten his back muscles excessively.

I want to loosen Mick’s back muscles more!  He is still very stiff in turns, he would rather do a turn on the hindquarters than even wide turns.  A good part of each lesson I am winding my way around the jumps using mainly my seat and legs, but he does not seem to be much looser at the end of the lesson than he was in the beginning.  I am pretty sure that if I was riding Mick every day I could fix this problem in a few months, but at just 30 minutes a week with other people riding him I do not know if I will ever get him to loosen his back muscles as much as I would like.  Such is life, and it is not Mick’s fault.

Friday my son took me out to the stable so I could work on Mia.  It had rained some the previous night but the rain seemed to have stopped.  When we got to the stable Darryl warned me that Debbie had just called him to say that it was pouring down rain ten miles away.  I got to groom and trim Mia for the first time in three weeks which was fine, but as soon as we saddled and bridled her the rain started falling.  Groan!  I asked Joe to walk Mia up and down the barn aisle a few times so she would have more time to get used to the EZ-Fit saddle and then we untacked ,at which point the rain stopped, of course.  I was so tired from trimming her feet I was not too disappointed, since the wind was constantly changing directions it would have been a more eventful ride than usual.

After my husband, Debbie, and my son  complained about the stirrup hitting their knees when they carried the EZ-Fit saddle (there is no way to run up the stirrups like on an English saddle) I knew I had to do something.  I also had problems with the right stirrup ending up under the saddle when the saddle was put on the horse’s back.  I rummaged around and found some Pelham bit converters.  I used one, laid it over the seat of the saddle, buckled a stirrup to each end, and my problem was solved.  Of course I have now to figure out where to put the strap when I am riding so I won’t lose it.

Today the weather cooperated and I got to ride Cider again since I want to give her the three to four rides she needs to make up her mind about a new piece of tack on consecutive weeks.  I lengthened the stirrups a hole, while they were long enough on the more normal backed Arabians they were way too short for Cider’s WIDE flat back last week.  Though I had made sure that the stirrup leathers were on the same hole my right stirrup felt a hole longer, and then Shannon’s mother told me my right leather looked too long.  So Shannon shortened it and I felt more even in the saddle but something still did not feel just right.  I asked Shannon to look down the gullet of the saddle thinking that I might have to move the panels further apart for Cider, and Shannon noticed that the panels were not exactly even, not much, just an eighth of an inch off against the “ruler” tape under the pommel.  We talked about it and Shannon said that it also looked like Cider had more muscle on the left side of her back.  Even with these imperfections Cider strode forth with confidence and sprang into a nice impulsive trot when I asked her too.

One thing I had noticed last week was that Cider was not light to the hand with the cross-under bridle.  Well, I had not been riding her in a cross-under for years since Cider is one of the horses that prefers a bit when I ride her though she prefers the cross-under with other riders.  I hoped that by changing to a bit Cider would remember her old lightness but I had no such luck.  It used to be that I just had to twitch my little fingers and she would slow down or halt immediately, today I twitched my little fingers and she ignored them completely.  I did give and take, and she ignored that too.    Finally I had to set my hands and resist, which meant I was pulling against her mouth.  It took three to six strides to get her to halt and my arms got tired.  So Cider got schooled at halting and standing still on a loose rein, something that Cider did not like doing since she wanted to MOVE.  Maybe I will change from the Mullen mouth to a JP Dr. Bristol D-ring snaffle for my next ride.  She did improve her responsiveness to the bit during the ride but this is something I will have to retrain her on.  I felt like I was a ham-fisted brute, if I had done that to Mia she would have been slinging her head around in utter despair.

When I got home I moved the panel that was slightly awry on my EZ-Fit saddle, and unlike getting to the stirrup harness I had no problems at all.  Zip the panel off, measure, put it back on and press down.  Easy.

Have a great ride!

Jackie Cochran