Ah, summer is coming, and this week we got a foretaste of what is coming in a month or so. It has been so muggy that in the morning it almost looks like it is raining, and the heat just adds to the misery. This weather is not doing my MS symptoms much good, my left hand started to drop things and my fingers started working against each other instead of cooperating. I was sort of worried about riding in the heat (I go through this each year), but once I got up on horseback my body started working well, and I did not even drop a rein!

Wednesday Mia DID NOT WANT TO MOVE. After much gentle urging Mia finally started to stride out at the walk, and by the end of the lesson she gave me a trot with impulse again. She was not delivering quite enough impulse to do full contact, but she willingly kept contact with her tongue and occasionally gently "chewed on the bit" while we were moving. Of course all her downward transitions were prompt and smooth, she is usually willing to stop. My aim is always to slow down/halt without any visible aids, and according to Debbie's reaction succeeded at least once. On Friday she was much more supple and easier to get moving but had some reluctance to reach out. Turns out that all the mares in the lesson horse mare paddock had decided to run around madly while the new Friesian mare was being taught to lunge in the riding arena, and that Mia was running around madly with the rest of the group. So Friday was a recovery day for her, and after a while she lenthened her stride out, and we ended up again with a good impulsive trot. Hopefully next week she will have enough drive from her hindquarters to establish full contact again.

Cider, on the other hand, was fully recovered from her unpleasant encounter with the stone in her hoof last week, and today she decided to make up for her lack of impulse last week. My energizer bunny is back! So eager to move forward, so willing to move her legs rapidly, I spent most of my ride today keeping her at a steady rate of speed. I actually got a decent circle out of her, though I had to moderate each step to keep her on the track of the circle, but a big improvement from our usual ameboid shaped "circle". I asked her to lengthen her walk again, and she started using her body to stretch out. I find that Cider is perfectly willing to move her legs faster, but it seems that her previous riders did not work on lengthening. I suppose this is in part because she is half-Welsh, why lengthen her stride when she can just move her legs faster? She acted like I was being soooo unreasonable, but gave me a good long striding walk for a quarter of the ring before I got too tired to keep it up.

Part of Cider's recovery consisted of being reluctant to slow down. As I was using stronger aids I reflected on the fact that if a horse is comfortable with its bit it usually is perfectly happy to LEAN on it. While I appreciate bitless riding, and I realize that sometimes my hands are just too bad to keep contact (the horses will tell me), I do not understand the current bit phobia, or the current reluctance to keep a horse on contact the majority of the ride. Cider is one mare who INSISTS on keeping contact, and if I am not careful she will make her contact stronger and stronger until I feel like I am keeping contact with a locomotive. Mia, being a full Arab, has the usual Arab reluctance to keep contact properly, preferring to invert her neck and put her head up to avoid the contact. I can keep both mares on good contact without them expressing their individual evasions because I know that good contact STARTS WITH THE HIND LEGS. It is the hind legs tracking up under the horse's body that give the head and neck the support they need to comfortably keep contact. It does not really matter that one horse evades by throwing her head up and the other horse evades by boring into the bit, both faults arise because the horse is not bringing her hind leg far enough under her body to support the forehand. By concentrating on the activity of the hind legs I end up with both mares keeping nice, soft contact. It is when I am too tired to keep the hind legs going right that the evasions start creeping in.

It took me over 18 months to establish full contact with Mia because her hind legs were very VERY weak, I had to strengthen and supple her hind legs before I could realistically ask for full contact. If I had insisted on full contact from the beginning of her rehabilitation all I would have gotten is her head up in the air and her hind legs dragging behind. As it was at first I couldn't reliably keep even soft contact for long. As her hind legs got stronger and more able to reach under her body I built up the time I kept her on soft contact. At the beginning she needed to stretch her neck frequently, but as the months passed she has needed to stretch out her neck less and less, until it is now just something I offer occasionally. A few months ago I started asking for a slightly stronger contact during the trot after she had fully warmed up. Mia started then to give me a trot with suspension. I gradually increased the time spent in this new trot until she showed herself willing to go further with the contact. Only then, a few weeks ago, did I ask for a full, strong contact, and she rewarded me with a trot with IMPULSE. If I had gone the popular route of using martingles, draw reins, and harsher bits to "correct" her faulty way of going, she would have NEVER GOTTEN STRONG ENOUGH to give me a trot with impulse, because the only way out of these difficulties is to teach the horse to bring its hind legs under its body, and by making the hindlegs strong enough and supple enough to do this extra work. Mia is now at a point that I feel that I can introduce real work. We will never go far, her because of her arthritis and me because of my MS, but I find that riding a horse on good contact with impulse is reward enough.

Have a great ride!