Saturday, January 27, 2018

Paso Fino adventures!

I'm a sucker for a cute and snorty little horsey with a good engine, and that's exactly what I got on this trip!

I just got back two days ago from ten days in Orlando with my family. When I went on the vacation, I didn't pack a single piece of riding gear. I thought, it's only ten days, and I've been riding a lot lately. I'm sure we'll have other things to fill our time, so I should just use the time to take a break from riding. I had been feeling a bit nervous and reluctant lately with my riding, for a number of reasons, so I didn't think I'd mind the short hiatus.

Well...

There's this thing a lot of riders do when they're passengers in a vehicle. That is: stare out the window at the landscape rolling by, and imagine riding through it. Picking a path, deciding where the best parts for a good canter would be... That sort of thing. And with the sunshine and perfectly comfortable weather in the low 20s, the varied terrain with great looking footing... Ughhhh I lasted ONE day before looking up riding stables.

There were some very questionable sounding places (including one that offered "trail rides" consisting of being plopped on a horse and then silently led in walk circles around the property by someone driving a golf cart) but one of the best reviewed places was a Paso Fino stable! They offered kid and beginner lessons there, so I figured there'd be a) helmets and b) maybe a horse that could gait and also wouldn't kill me!

So I cold-called them, made sure they had helmets, and booked a lesson for the next morning.

I got there and met Jessica, the owner of the place. She was very nice and reminded me of one of the leads in one of the bad horse camp movies Laura and I had watched. (Not in a bad way at all -- just a resemblance!) She immediately said, "So you're a strong rider. I think I'll put you on Sueno. I think you can handle him." Well, ever-confident me, I'm like "Uhhhhhh." And immediately got clarification.

She said he was "naughty," but the two naughty things he did were: root at the reins, and try to escape out the gate.

"Oh, okay! As long as he doesn't try to take off on me."
"Oh he absolutely WILL!"

Oh boy. So I went and got him, and the enormous spoon curb bit wasn't super reassuring regarding the taking-off consideration. However, he was a perfect gentleman to catch, brush, tack and mount (other than being a little mouthy, which was more cute than problematic.)

I immediately got to experience what she meant about him wanting to take off, and also understood the importance of the BIG bit... but neither of these things were actually negative at all, as it turned out, because he was keen, smart, and really listened.

Experiencing the "corto" gait for the first time was wild. Instead of moving up from distinctly-a-walk to distinctly-a-trot, the walk just got fast and very animated. You could tell it was different gait once it was happening, but there was no distinct gear-shift-moment. Other first impression: I remember driving our lawn tractor when I was growing up. When it was in gear, it stayed forward at a constant speed by default, and you had to put the brake on and keep it on to slow or stop it. Well, he was like that. With no input, he just wanted to zip around in his impressively peppy gait, and there were lots of rein and seat cues to hold him back and keep him back. You couldn't halt him and release the reins, because releasing was permission for GO!

He also had QUITE the accelerator. Any amount of leg was met by shooting forward. On the instructors advice, I made ONE kissing sound and he shot forward to fast I'm just glad I kept my seat! The same thing happened later when I tried clucking. Poor little guy did exactly what he was supposed to but I was so shocked by the sudden acceleration that I caught him in the mouth both times. Sorry buddy!

I was riding with about 80% hands for the first half of the hour, I'm sorry to say, but got a lot more seat and weight involved by the end. Fun discovery I made about myself: if an instructor ever wants me to stop tipping forward, just tell me that leaning forward is a cue for the horse to speed up because I will then sit RAMROD STRAIGHT for the entire ride.

I had some steering issues because I was afraid to put ANY leg on, and he would cut his turns too tightly (we did corto serpentines and figure 8s around bending poles) or drift in or out at the arena corners. I'm not sure how well he listened to lateral leg cues anyhow, though. I did boot him a bit with inside leg once, once I had him figured out a little better, and he shifted over for me, but that could have just been surprise.

His canter was really really fun. It was so smooth that the only way I could tell he'd moved to cantering was feeling a very slight change in rhythm. Forget figuring out what lead! His back barely moved at all. I did have a little bounce at his canter, but I think that was mainly my fault for having my stirrups too long. The first bit of canter I had on him, it was a little faster and more strung out (which is to say not strung out at all by another other horse standards) but the canter at the end of my lesson was so smooth and lovely, I didn't want to stop!

While we didn't actually intentionally work on it, I did get a little bit of largo towards the end of the lesson, too. It had the same rhythm as the corto, but was bigger and faster and covered more ground. It was still very smooth though!

Towards the end of the lesson, just in conversation as she was letting me out to ride back over and untack, she mentioned that they have great trails that they love to go out on. WELL. I asked her, "Do you do trail rides here?" "Well... Not for the public. We just go out ourselves. But... If you wanted, I could take you out, if you can make it back again. You're a really good rider, and I know you could handle it!"

Well. That's another post!

No comments:

Post a Comment