Cob Jockey

My game plan for 1-2 was to use the warmup that's been working at home lately.  That is: develop a forward trot with hands forward and still, reins short and upper body slightly forward.  Throw in a few transitions, but mostly leave him alone until he stops gawking at stuff, starts paying attention to me, and I feel him relax over his topline.  Then start sitting and doing some lateral work.

It took a lot of courage on my part to do that at a show, because it takes a LONG TIME, and he looks awful for most of it.  Plus I look like I don't know what I'm doing just trotting in 20m circles and diagonals for forever.  But I just have to take a deep breath and wait him out, because I know it works, and if I start asking for too much too early the entire ride suffers.

Still waiting... PC: My momma

The warmup won't always be like this, I know at some point I will figure something out and it will take half as long to get warmed up, but this is where we are right now.  And, it does work:

PC all photos in the rest of this post: Lisa Brezina

Connor's full sister's owner/rider was watching me and someone else who was very handsy warm up at the same time, and she told Connor's breeder "I wish that girl would just take an extra 10 minutes to let the horse relax like Jen did."  She rides I-1, and with as insecure about this warmup as I am, that made me happy.

We seriously took that into the ring too.  This is the most straight this horse has ever been at the canter:



Unnnnnnfortunately halfway through the test I started trying too hard and got tense.  If I had just relaxed and rode inside the ring the way I did outside, my score would have been better.  As it was, we scored a 61.719%, and won a three way tie breaker on our collectives to take 7th out of 14 in the open division.

Ughhhhhhhh GIVE WITH YOUR ELBOWS!  The comment here was "head nodding, relax elbows".  My trainer was giddy with delight that a judge validated what she tells me constantly.

Was I disappointed?  Maybe a tiny bit.  It felt like a mid-60's test to me at first, and we usually score well on 1-2.  But after I thought about it, you know, this was a championship level class, with most of my competitors driving 5-10 hours to get here.  And I say this not to disparage myself, but in total honesty: we are absolutely still mediocre at first level.  So 7th out of 14 is exactly where we should be.

I scored around this last year, but this feels totally different.  I'm riding better than ever, most of the time, except when I try too hard in tests, which I can overcome and have already this year at a different show, and the score reflected it.  I don't feel desperately sad at this score like I did after championships last year: I feel upbeat and awesome about where we are, because we have made miles of progress.

And best of all, the pictures (mostly) show a relaxed pony with an open throatlatch instead of a tense pony being held back by hard hands.  My warmup WORKED, on both his brain and his body, and that's a huge achievement.

It's another stop along the journey, and win or lose, boy is it fun.

The test was honestly not my focus of Heartland, but it still deserves a mention.  We got 3rd in a class of probably 9 or 10, with a 67%.  It could easily have broken 70%, but someone turned into a fire breathing dragon the second he realized we were showing, and we lost several accuracy points as a result.

This down transition was supposed to happen at M, but happened a few feet late.  My too-long reins and too far back elbows did not help here.

When we were going around the outside of the ring, he started prancing, and also crow hopped and did a squeal/whinny combo.  I don't mind his extra energy, which he often gets in the show ring, but I do need to learn how to channel it.  I did a good job with that on Saturday in every part except the canter.

We are so braced against each other here, although at least my body is forward instead of back, and it's just my arms contributing.  (That's a partial position win compared to normal).

Our scores ranged from 5.5 (that late transition in the first picture) to 8.0's for the left lead canter and final halt.  Our negative comments were things like "rushing", "hurried", "late".  One time the "late" was because of pilot error, but two other times they were due to Connor being a challenging ride.

I will take that 7.5 for rider position, thank you very much!

All in all, I was so happy with how the test went, I didn't care how we scored.  Almost everything we got knocked for is pretty easily fixable or we've done better in the past, and I feel like the doors are opening to fix the rest now that my position is getting stronger and I'm more mentally present in tests.  I mean, I actually remembered to shorten my reins multiple times in the test - that's huge!

We still like the stretchy trot. Also, my PRI pony pad shifted during the canter.  Need to figure that one out.

The biggest thing is going to be relaxing my position at the canter so that we can resolve the rushing issues.  Controlling the canter is going to be key for us in the move to Second.

The whole point of going to Heartland was to 1. Show Dressage with my trainer there to warm us up for the first time ever, 2. Figure out a good warm-up plan and length, 3. Have a confidence building outing with our favorite test, 1-2.


Our warm-up ended being 25 minutes long, and looked like this:

1. Length: 5 minutes. Mount in stabling and walk over to warm-up ring.  Focus on my position and try to get Connor's attention.

Photos do not tell the entire story.  This pony was UP for this test.

2. Length: 5 minutes. Walk circles of varying sizes and directions while waiting on my trainer.  Try to get the pony to relax in an unusual warm-up ring.  Focus on my position and getting good bend.  Extra attention paid to sitting "up" and my hands being forward and following with short reins.


3. Length: 10 minutes. Trainer gets there and quickly OK's the walk, we didn't want to beat it to death.  Move on to lots of walk/trot transitions on circles of varying sizes, changing direction often.  Focus on getting good bend and good position.  We would only trot as long as the trot was good and then go back down to walk.  In the beginning, that was just a few strides.  Toward the end of the 10 minutes, we were trotting entire circles with good quality.


4. Length: 5 minutes. A couple of longer canters, both to release some energy and to work on getting him to stand up and me to be in the correct place in the saddle.

A sassy tail swish.

It went by so quickly, I felt like I time traveled when we pulled up from the last canter and my trainer told me it was time to go in.  He felt GOOD after that warm-up, and I knew the test would be good.

I think the focus on position and the transitions were the biggest differences from my normal non-trainer warm-up.  I'm looking forward to playing with (but not rigidly sticking to) this recipe both at home and at shows this year.

What happened at Heartland goes back to my lesson on Thursday.

Photos from schooling ride on Friday.

I wouldn't say Connor was running away with me, but he was strong at the canter and very difficult to pull up.  He finally relaxed when I figured out three things: I was gripping with my thighs, I had too much inside rein, and I wasn't tall/firm enough in my core.

(My trainer also constantly nailed me for my hands being too far back/reins being too long the entire lesson, which helped a lot.)


The first two, gripping with the thighs and the inside rein, affected the canter.  He softened, relaxed and stopped running through my hands when I fixed those.

(It goes back to something Nancy K told me, which is that something about the way I sit naturally, particularly in my thighs, doesn't encourage him to think he can go "up", which makes our transitions flat and the quality of our gaits poor and quick.  You can see it in most of our photos, especially at shows, I just look tense through my whole body.)

August of 2015: TENSE.

My core affected our upward transitions and the gaits that followed.  If I 'sat on my pockets', moved the tension from my thighs to my glutes and abs, and thought "up" with my ribcage, his transition and the subsequent trot was awesome.  Every. Time.




I schooled just long enough Friday night to cement those ideas from Thursday in my brain, and I have the photos to prove it stuck on Saturday.  My default position usually includes hunched shoulders, a floppy core, long reins/elbows too far back, and lower leg nowhere near it's supposed to be.  Even if I was aware of those issues in lessons, I was never present enough in the show ring to fix them, so when Connor needed me most I was not physically helping him out:

August of 2015:

And in the test on Saturday:


I finally feel, and can see in the pictures, that I am actually sitting on this horse and not death grip perching on top of him.  PROGRESS!

While a ton of photos of 1-1 will wrap up this post below, I only have a few pictures of 1-2 from Harmony because the weather during my test wasn't exactly conducive to photo taking:


This was taken after I had already done my first test.  Most of that fell during my warmup.  Let me tell you, warming up with water dripping down the brim of your helmet in soaking wet clothes is not fun.

It was my first time showing in truly inclement weather, and I was desperate to keep my CWD from getting more wet than it had to.  Yes, I know leather can get wet and be fine, but seriously, I sold half my worldly possessions and rode bareback for 3 months in order to afford this magical piece of French leather.  I can't afford to replace it, so I am going to be stupid particular about taking care of it.

Old photo of the saddle cover in action

So I warmed up in the waterproof rideable CWD saddle cover, and the heavens opened up.  I was soaked through, and the cover was soaked as well, though not slippery at all.  I didn't think there was any way the saddle was dry under what felt like standing water under my butt, but when I pulled the cover off right as I went into the ring, it was dry as could be under there.  So, two thumbs up, CWD!

Such a well-designed object

1-2 was, as it has been most of the year, the second highest 1-2 of the day and maddeningly mediocre from my perspective.  We scored a 66.8%, with a terse judge writing mostly one-word comments that she wanted "more" from everything.

PC: My mom.

The thing is, I agree with her, and I specifically wanted to work on getting him on my aids at this show before championships in two weeks and score the 70% I know we're capable of at home, with my trainer.

This is Connor saying "Why are we doing this...why am I so wet..." PC: My mom

Since he wasn't tired at all after 1-2, I decided on a nice long warmup for 1-1 so I would have all the time in the world to try all the things I knew to get him straight and "switched on" so I could then give this judge "more."

We practice like we show: since there was standing water in the show ring, I made him do that in the warmup too.  Bonus: all the DQ's avoided the standing water like the plague, so we had the area to ourselves. PC: Connor's breeder, Lisa Brezina

Lisa's favorite photo of the day, just as the storm was moving out. PC: Lisa Brezina

Spoiler alert: It did not work.  PC for the rest of the photos in this post to Lisa Brezina, except where noted.



The thing I notice in all of these pictures (and noticed under saddle too, but could not fix) is that his withers are never straight.  He's leaning in the entire thing, which of course means he's both not straight and not on my aids.  And my position is enabling him.  This is not new.  But it's so annoying that I felt it every step of that test and could not fix it.


He still loves the stretchy trot:

 Motorcycling:

We practice in lakes because we show in lakes.  Former eventers FTW.

Good pony.

Bit check is always interesting with this horse, given his phobia of people walking straight up to him, but luckily he didn't take offense to this older gentleman.


I was pretty down after that test.  I knew I didn't get done what I wanted to get done, I knew it wasn't as good as it could be, I knew it was the fault of my poor position, and seeing the pictures that confirmed it made me sad.  I was grateful for them, this is where we are, but at the same time, I felt like a terrible rider for not being able to get my position sorted out enough or warm my horse up well enough to get him on my aids.  The score wasn't bad, 65% and 3rd of 3, but I was beating myself up over it.

FBR was supposed to be painting fence at the barn that day, but due to the rain, she got to come watch!

But not the pony.  He was a good boy.  What a trooper!

Being majestic between classes. PC: My mom