So this week I did my horsemanship with Maggie, a gray mare. Since Morgan was not around, Deb gave me my task for the day, which was keeping Maggie straight when we were walking, and have her stay straight when we stopped.
The first thing that happened was I discovered Maggie was taller than Money. Now I knew this just looking at her, of course, but one of the first things I had to do was figure out how to adjust to her being taller. First off, where I had needed to shorten my stride so that Money didn’t have to jog to keep up with me, for Maggie I could walk more normally. Secondly I had to keep my right hand higher so that I wasn’t forcing her to keep her head down.
So we started off walking. I found I needed to make sure to keep my hand smooth, and that often times when Maggie’s body began to move away from me, it was actually because I was walking too slowly. I had to speed up enough to straighten her out, but not too much that she would start trotting.
I also was able to improve my stopping such that I felt much more confidant about it. Not every stop was perfect, but it was much better than last week at least.
Maggie also has an annoying habit of turning her head toward me when she stops. Money was very well trained and I never had to think about that, but with Maggie it has to be in the back of your mind in order to keep her straight. It was interesting learning to adjust between the two horses. I assume when you’re going to go to a show, you focus on using one horse so you get practice with them, but for learning, lots of experience is better than being stuck on just one horse.
