I ended last year's lessons by riding Mariah, and I started this year's lessons by riding her as well.  

Both Vivie and James came for their lesson.  Vivie was on Romeo, I don't know if it was her first time riding him for sure but I got the impression that it was. She adored him ;) And James was on Cordell. 

The stirrups on the saddle I like to use have not been 'rolled' back up.  Thus, I still struggle with adjusting them.  I chose to adjust them as if we were going to be doing some jumping, though I didn't know if we were. 

So I mounted up and just walked around for a bit.  My trainer didn't speak to me for a bit, but when she did, she told me to put my heels down, that I was grinding them into Mariah's sides.  She said that might be because my stirrups were too short, and I might have to adjust them longer.  

So I turned my heels down as far as I could manage.  When my trainer looked back to me, she said that I had taken my heels off Mariah's sides, but the effort of keeping them down was going to wear me out over the course of the ride.  So she told me to adjust them longer.  

The thing is, I was at the first whole that is punched after the holes that were already in the stirrup leathers.  If I went down, I'd have to make a pretty big leap downward, and thus my stirrups feel more like dressage length to me.  But it appeared I really didn't have a choice, and it didn't feel as long to me as I thought it would.

While I was dismounting and adjusting my stirrups, my trainer was demonstrating / talking about something new she'd discovered about Twister. (This was part of the reason why I chose to dismount to adjust my stirrups, I didn't want Mariah spooking at Twister while I was up there.)

My trainer finally noticed, discovered, whatever you want to call it, that Twister likes to look out of his left eye and doesn't like to do so out of his right eye.  This is not because he has vision problems, but somehow he has developed this habit, this preference, of looking out of his left eye.

Part of how she figured this out was with the change of direction exercise when she ground-works him.  If she asks him to step one way with his forehand, where he can look out of his left eye, he does it smoothly and fluidly like he should, with his whole body in alignment.  But if she asks him to step the other way, where he would have to look with his right eye to see where he was to go, it's harder for him.  He'll either turn his head so he can see his way with his left eye, or he'll literally just not look and hope he gets it right.  My trainer worked him with that change of direction exercise for like, half an hour, and not once did he look out of that right eye.

Another thing that tipped my trainer off about this was that she got to go watch some high level show jumping.  One of the horses there only has one eye.  On turns to jumps that, normally, he'd be looking for out of the eye that he doesn't have, he had to turn his head quite far in order to see the jump, and my trainer recognized this was something that Twister was doing.  Only Twister has a working eye that he can look out of! 

So, my trainer has started working with this. She can't do much in the saddle, but on the ground she can do more.  So she's started asking him to turn his forehand so that he has to look with his right eye, but she'll be right next to him, and she'll gently cup her hand over his left eye so he can't see out of it (or she might use the flag to cover up that eye).  And she just keep as him to turn with that eye covered, and thus he can't look with that left eye.  This forces him to start looking out of that right eye, and she'll reward him once he starts doing so.

In fact, right as she was demonstrating this, she asked him to turn his forehand without covering his left eye, and he chose to look out of that right eye.  So she immediately rewarded him for that by taking him out of the arena and tying him up at the hitching post for a break. 

It's one of those things where, it's hard to notice but it makes a lot of sense once you do.  It helps her understand a lot of Twister's persistently odd behavior, despite all the training he's been given.  

That's a summary of what my trainer was telling us; she didn't necessarily say that all in that order or in that way, but that's what I got out of it.  By the time she was done with her 'lecture', I'd adjusted my stirrups and remounted, and been having Mariah stand there for awhile.   

My trainer apologized for taking so long, but none of us was impatient or frustrated about it.  We all enjoyed learning about it, I never knew a horse would do something like that.  

After that, my trainer assigned us our next riding tasks.  She asked me if I'd done any of the getting the horse to step over a pole with the outside leg first exercise.  Remember, I did that on Riggs once before, but I'd never done it on Mariah.  I told her that.

So she said we would do that exercise, and to go over to the circle of poles.  I thought she meant to do the exercise right then, but I don't think she did, and I also don't think she knew that's what I was trying to do.  

I had some success with what I tried, but I wasn't turning her enough, I don't think.  Anyhow, we went through how many ever circles in each direction at the walk.  One of the poles, the one on the north side of the arena, was raised up on cinder blocks to cavaletti height.  Mariah just had to step over it.  In the past, this has formed a mini jump for Mariah and me, so...

Then my trainer told me to go into trot on the circle of poles.  With that raised pole still raised.  Oh, and on the top of that, she raised the pole on the south side as well.  And she just wanted me to trot around the circle while still posting.  No jumping.  (This was going clock-wise, or to the right, around the circle.)

I haven't trotted over raised poles very much in my riding career.  The few times I have have not felt good.  So, when I came up to those raised poles, I wanted to brace.  Maybe I didn't get up in two point, but I did stop posting, and you can't do that because then Mariah might think she's supposed to jump it.  Which she did, several times, landing in canter, and that only made me brace worse.  On top of that, it would make me miss the next pole after that.  

This mostly happened on the pole on the north side of the arena, I was actually managing over the south raised pole better.  This repeated several times and my trainer was like "Abby, you've got to steer."  She also told me, again and again, that I had to keep posting.  And to stick my arms out, in a way that felt awkward, so that I wasn't catching against or holding Mariah in her mouth. 

What helped me get over the bracing and keep posting was focusing on steering to the next pole.  That helped take my mind off of whether she was going to jump or not.  That time was better, and so was the next one, as I began to get the feel of it and realized Mariah wouldn't jump if I just kept posting.  It might feel terrible when she went over it, but she wouldn't jump.  And it would feel less terrible if I would keep posting.

Soon after that, we took a halted break.  Then we did the same exercise going the other direction.  I know that going to the left, or counter-clockwise, is my and Mariah's harder side, so I was on guard for that, trying to make sure that my body was in alignment like it needed to be.

But despite that, going this way went a lot better than going the other way had.  The reason being that I'd begun to figure out how to keep posting over the raised poles, and thus things went a lot smoother in that regard in the beginning.  

However, after the beginning, things kinda did go downhill for a bit and I started bracing again.  The reason was that the a delivery truck came to my trainer's house, and of course the dogs want to go out to greet it / bark at it / do what dogs do to delivery people.  My trainer was yelling at them to get them called off, and while I was reasonably sure that's what she was doing, it distracted me and made me a little like 'what's going on'.  

But once that had passed, I was able to pick myself up and go back to doing things the way I was supposed to.  So, we finished off that round well.  My trainer was very pleased to see how I'd changed and learned from went I first started doing the exercise. 

It was after doing that exercise that it was time to work on the stepping-over-with-the-outside-foot-first exercise.  This exercise is designed to make a horse learn more about giving their feet to us.  It is particularly helpful for horses who do jumping.  It helps them learn, for example, when to change their leads. 

My trainer's own personal trainer will often send her top level show jumping horses to work with, though they're often green babies when they come to her.  She does this exercise a lot with them, and the personal trainer they come from approves highly of it.  She says those horses are good at picking up their leads while showjumping.  So, if she says it's important for those upper-level horses, it's probably good for horses like Mariah.

The goal of this exercise is the position the horse on the circle so that it's easier for them to step over the pole with their outside front foot first.  Essentially, we're choosing which foot we want them to step over with by the position of their body.  The way we do this is turning the horse towards the inside of the circle, though our inside leg keeps them from actually going farther into the circle, so that it ends up being a sort of leg yield and they don't come up quite straight to the pole, but with their outside shoulder facing it first.  

(After my ride, I realized that I think I was doing some form of shoulder-in on a circle.)  When Mariah stepped over two poles in a row with that outside foot, I was to let her walk straight to reward her.

Some horses really struggle with this.  I can remember seeing Rugar working himself up into a real sweat over it because he did not want to step over the pole with that outside foot.

But the thing about Mariah is that she is easily bendable.  In fact, that's been a problem in the past for me, to keep her straight.  She didn't throw a hissy fit at all when I started asking this new thing of her.  Oh, and it really helped that my trainer took down the two raised poles, so it was just regular poles we had to work with.

The aids for this exercise are an inside leg asking for more bend, along with the inside rein, while stepping out more in the outside stirrup to draw the horse over and allowing the horse to do so with the outside rein. Along with turning the upper body and seat more to the inside.  So it's similar to / a version of leg yield or shoulder-in.  This means the horse will meet the pole with their outside leg & shoulder facing it first, and thus, the easiest thing to do is step over it with the outside foot first.  It is technical, and I'm glad we were in walk to do it.

The thing which I did the different this second time when I tried it was that I turned my upper body and thus Mariah more. I asked for more bend, and I think I was more persistent about keeping it. This set Mariah up better. 

It didn't take us long to step over two poles in a row with that outside foot first.  So I let her walk straight, then came back and it wasn't long before we stepped over two poles with that foot first again.  I think I did this one or two more times before changing directions.  I'd been going to the left before, now I was going to right.  (I think.)

We did well on this side too.  I rewarded her several times, if I remember correctly.  On one of the last ones, my trainer complimented me on how I was using the reins.  She said I was using them as I needed to, making adjustments as I needed to, and I wasn't hanging on Mariah's mouth.  So, that was nice to hear.

My trainer said to change sides and do it going the other way if I hadn't already.  And if she did well going that way, to reward her with a dismount.(She hadn't really been watching me, she'd left me to my own devices to experiment, though she told me I could ask if I had questions, since she was right there.)  I did change directions, but I only did one or two rounds of the exercise before rewarding Mariah by dismounting.

She really has changed.  I don't know if anyone reading this will remember, but soon after she got here, I put her on the circle of poles in trot, with no raised poles, and she threw a temper tantrum about it.  Now she'll happily enough tolerate trotting around it with two raised poles.  And I could put my inside leg on her, and she wasn't mad about it.  Nor did she fuss about doing something new. 

So, overall, a good lesson to start the year off with.

Actual lesson 1/3/2023