Super star Rama

Since mum can't ride because of her arm, for the last week and a few days I've been riding Rama once again. He's a lovely chap to work it, but it has taken a while for us to get used to each other again. I don't know how top riders can just hop on a horse and go do a competition straight away, it took us more than a few days to fully understand each other, and now finally it is starting to pay off. The last couple of days Rama has been great, it appears that I've found which buttons to press to get the best reaction out of him, and which exercises work best to get him moving better...

Even though mum and I ride with pretty similar styles, I'd forgotten how different Rama is to Vallu, and so the first week was a big struggle for me. Rama also has a pretty specific and long warm up which he needs in order to be able to work well (obviously he needs longer because he is older, and more stiff than Vallu is) And as Vallu is so much quicker and easier to warm up, it took me longer than I excepted for my brain to understand that I need to ride a longer warm up.

As every horse is different, it is not a surprise that Rama would be different to ride, but having ridden one horse for so long I had forgot that as a rider you need to be much more flexible to each individual horse's needs and ways of moving. Rama needs a lot of inside leg to outside rein on the left rein to make sure he is around your leg, and not falling out of his shoulder. This becomes very apparent on a big twenty metre circle, where you will suddenly find yourself on a 12m circle if you don't pay attention to it! The left shoulder also needs attention when warming up in right canter, where he will easily go towards the wall instead of staying straight on the track. (If anyone has this problem, a great quick tip is to place your whip on the horse's shoulder - just resting - this will encourage the horse not to fall out of the shoulder, and you don't even have to use the whip on them, big bonus )

After work walkies

Check out our spring colour bandages ;)

I'm very excited that it's all started to fall back into place, and I'm already looking at some smalls shows to do with him over the summer! Next Friday we might be able to go visit a stable close by which has a 1.2km path that we might use to go for a hack :)