This past week Jack’s owner Toni has been away, providing a perfect chance for me to ride more often. Of course this happened to be the same week the lovely UK got a heatwave, reaching a high of 36 degrees last Thursday with some major thunderstorms. So not the most ideal riding weather. The increase in temperatures and this increasingly drastic weather had me more primarily concerned about the environment. I try to do my little bit by reducing any single use plastics, using bamboo toothbrushes and straws, and when I go back to uni I am planning on doing my food shopping at the local farmers market, it means you have to bring your own carrier bags and it’s not delivered to your door, but its often much cheaper in the long run. And as a horsey way of helping the environment, Black Heart Equestrian are working on making all their products eco friendly with less damage to the environment which is of course fantastic, and their leggings are amazing too and are the best fitting I have ever owned compared to Aztec Diamond and Bella Rose Equestrian, so its a no brainer really.

With this I decided it was better not riding Jack in the extreme heat after how he behaved last Monday, it would have been unfair and it was so warm I barely managed to get around my daily dog walk, but the cold shower afterwards was refreshing! Thankfully the weekend saw a turn of the weather as things began to cool down a little, Toni also came back from holiday but she was happy for me to ride Jack today whilst she rode his fieldmate Diamond.

Jack as usual was not impressed at the prospect of riding, and told me that he would have much preferred going on a walk with Diamond instead of having me bouncing around on his back. He was super tough to get going even into an active walk today, I knew some of it was partial laziness, but he must have been suffering from the weather slightly too as it was rather warm despite the breeze. But thankfully it was nothing compared to last week. I used the old pony club trick of using the excess of my reins as a temporary whip to try to get him going, this did work in places however I was then a little jostled around as he shot forward and that is hard to stick to without stirrups! It got me thinking that perhaps a Jumping Bat would be ideal for him. I saw Ben Hobday have one at his clinic way back in February, its super short compared to a schooling whip or a general purpose whip and is simply there for the sake of being there. This way if I manage to get one I can use that on Jack hopefully without him bucking, as he hates the schooling whip and the general purpose whip, and he gets a little difficult to sit to after a while. I know that if I asked for some more professional help with this that Jack would probably need a lot of training to get him out of it, but at the end of the day he is a hacking cob and is at least 22, so I’m just going to pick and choose my battles with this one.

When it came to the riding I did the whole session with no stirrups as I want it almost to become the norm for me so that when I do have stirrups I shall have a better seat as well as a better knowledge of where my legs are supposed to be. I tried to get out of my kicking habit as we warmed up, by simply applying pressure with the sides of my legs to Jack’s belly and releasing the pressure when he moved. This is actually how you are supposed to ask for movement from a horse, so all the ‘keep kicking’ that I was taught when I was younger was just giving me bad habits. I know that it is a difficult one, as instead of using your heels to ask for the aid you have to use the inside of your leg. This is a little more difficult on a horse you are rather large for (I can fit a 17hh rather happily), however it did begin to work on Jack, although his problem was that he will happily walk forward, but it was maintaining the energy in the gait that was the hard part.

After a while I did manage to keep Jack going, and we even made it into trot! From this I found it easier to keep my balance and to sit nice and deeply within the saddle. My muscles began to warm up after a while so I was then able to focus less on myself and more on Jack as I encouraged him to lower his head and neck forward as well as keeping his energy active. This was not Jack’s favourite thing to do, but at the same time I could have made him work a lot harder. We did have a little canter on each rein but seeing as the canter transition on Jack is difficult most of the time, today it was super difficult with the addition of no stirrups, the heat, and him being extremely lazy. I probably didn’t sit back enough in the transition but he just did the pony trick of trotting faster and faster. Eventually we did break into canter and I did manage to sit to it nicely as well as the transition back to trot. Now I just want to become as confident without stirrups as I am with stirrups, so then I can have the confidence to give Jack a bit of a boot when he isn’t wanting to do as asked.