Cob Jockey

Last night was probably the last time Mary will get to see Disco for a good long while. She's moving a bit further away for her husband's job in the next month or so, and Disco is leaving for The National Drive and "S3x Camp" right after the drive. So, she put a proper ride on him for the first time ever (her only other time on him was cooling him out bareback).

PC most photos: Leah

Shenanigans and all.

It was great to see her on him and to get her assessment of him. She really enjoyed herself, and couldn't stop commenting on how much he enjoys new games, how thoroughly he thinks through problems, and how you can really feel his moment of understanding when he gets something "right". 

She's right, in all those respects, and it's such a very different ride from Connor. Connor is not a thinker, he's react-er. He learns more slowly and less deliberately than Disco does, and it takes things longer to be confirmed with Connor.

Of course, she also pushed his buttons in ways I haven't, and as a result, we had one small moment of disobedience, his first since he's been here.

This was not a spook, it was a very obvious attempt to see if he could get out of work a few minutes into the steering game. Mary sat it well, and just like when he tried to lawn dart the trainer in Canada, he seemed to go "Well, that didn't work so I guess I'll just get on with it," and never tried it again.

She didn't ride him to exhaustion at all, but it just doesn't take much to wear him out yet, and he was more than up for being ground tied for grooming afterward - didn't move one single foot.

Now that his ground tying is very solid, I've been leaving him ground tied for post-ride grooming as much as possible - both for the practice, and so that he can relax over his topline. "His" crossties are still set very short so that he can't grab them - although now that I type this, I realize he hasn't tried that in months, so we should probably lengthen them and see if we're past that stage. Babies!

I am really going to miss Mary living so close, both as a friend and especially as an exceptional horsewoman. She just thinks differently than I do, and all of us have benefited greatly from having her around these last 5 years.

Up until last night, I hadn't cantered Disco under saddle yet. I had asked a few times a couple months ago and only ever succeeded in getting a strong trot out of him. It was a strength, coordination and confidence thing. He had done it in Canada with the pro, but never with me, and hadn't cantered under saddle in over a year.

All photos by Leah

So I took it back and worked it on the lunge. Not a lot, and only on big circles, but enough to where I knew he was getting more comfortable with it in general, and to where the "canter" cue was confirmed.

It was actually so confirmed that by the time Mary and I reconvened for Round 2 of "Get Disco to Canter Under Saddle" (with Round 1 being interrupted by that EF-2 tornado a couple weeks ago), I told her we didn't need to use the baby jump to get him to canter, that I thought he understood the canter cue well enough to just pick it up.

So that's exactly what we did.

There was a moment at first where it felt to me like he was going to start playing and dolphin-ing and I tried to grab the reins to prevent him from putting his head down and broncing, but Mary brought us down and asked what I felt and explained that it had just been him trying to find his balance, and again reiterated where she wanted my hands. 

Otherwise, it was quite uneventful, and his canter is EXCITING. I got the sensation over and over that it was a canter I could take to the base of a jump, strong and powerful and full of impulsion, not just speed. It was so unlike Connor's canter - we spent years trying to get his canter where Disco's naturally already is.

It went so perfectly...and my immediate reaction was this deep, confirmed, peaceful thought that I really do need to send him off for training now.

Why?

Because even though it went perfectly, he was a good boy and I was very proud of how I was able to think through it and ride it without devolving into lizard brain, the canter in particular is going to be a hard gait for me to influence as long as it's in the wild-and-woolly baby stages. 

I could either spend the next year or two trying and probably mostly failing to improve it, or I could send him to a professional for a couple of months this summer and take him into this coming winter at a point in his training where I do have the tools and skillset and comfort level to make rapid progress with him. And after screwing Connor up and then having to pay later on to have him fixed, I know which one I'm picking this time.

But in the meantime, I'm basking in the glow of knowing that canter is in there, and dreaming of where it will take us someday...

Ever since Disco came home, Mary has been dying to free jump him, but the holidays and the weather made that impossible until last night. And boy was it worth the wait.

Mary and I have free jumped enough non-Warmblood horses at this point that I know what to expect from the first time, even for horses that end up enjoying and having aptitude for jumping. They're uncertain, they don't know how to use their bodies, they jump weird. We give them a positive experience, but we don't push them, and it's not usually until the second or third time that they really start to figure it out and show us what they might be made of. 

Of course, with testosterone on our side, I also joked that I felt like Disco would have all the attitude of a 19 year old Tik Tok star as soon as he jumped his first fence, and, well.

Nobody tell him those were ground poles, he thinks he just won the Olympics, lol

He ate it up.

He sent himself around and around at first, ears up, kicking his heels up when he finished a line like "Did you see how awesome I am?"

Man I love stallions, lol

As the jumps went up, his enthusiasm continued. He had a rail or two as he made some green horse pace and judgment mistakes, but generally he was very aware of his feet. 

I was also somewhat stunned to see him actually move for the first time. Here I thought he wasn't capable of moving like this, but he's been playing me.

We don't normally put the third fence up to an oxer for a horse's first time through the chute, but Mary noted that he was not fazed at all by any of this, and he really seemed to be enjoying it even after all the fences were up to verticals, so she put the back rail up.

This was the first time he was ever impressed by something, but he still went over, and he showed us what those hindquarters are capable of.

Baby's first oxer!

We sent him over the oxer one more time so he could prove to himself that he could do it before taking the back rail down and letting him end on an easy, confidence building one:

"I'm glad he got a little impressed with the oxer. I think it’ll kinda challenge him and respect the “game” and blow his brain open a little more each time," Mary said later. I couldn't agree more. He wasn't scared, but it was the first time I saw him ever really forced to think through some circumstances, and it was good for him.

 

 

She also said he's got the hindquarters for scope and the canter for power, but that he's not naturally catty and we'll have to teach that. But the raw materials are there.

 

No idea why this GIF insists on being slow mo but oh well. Mary got on bareback to cool him out afterwards and walked him down the line so that he understood that poles don't always mean bomb around.

 

We won't be free jumping him that big again for a long while. Mary's plan from here is to free jump him over smaller, weird things for the forseeable future. Confidence building things. Flower boxes and little verticals with a tarp over them and barrels. And to start to incorporate more poles into my under saddle rides, but not to jump him under saddle until he's pretty been-there-done-that on small, weird stuff. At not quite four, I couldn't agree more with the plan.

 

But I'm already dreaming of getting back to eventing with this one... 

Yes, this is a video. He was so happy just to stand there with his ears up like this. I just love him.

It's been a while since Mary could make it out to the barn, but two weekends ago we made the most of it by ponying Disco for the first time!

But first, Annie learned how to move the good shavings out of the way to get to the pee spot <3

And don't worry, she got some riding time too. Look at how well she sits in the saddle already!

I don't know when the "right" age to starting ponying is, but I'm sure I waited til the right time to start it with Disco. It wasn't until recently that I felt like he understood work enough, respected human bubbles enough, and was capable of NOT playing with Connor for long enough that ponying would be a success if we tried it. I still expected some shenanigans even still though.

...and I could not have been more wrong.

He was...perfect. 

We set him up for success in a couple of ways. One, he understands now that the surcingle and pad mean "work time", so I put them on him as a signal that this was going to be work and not play. Two, I decided to put Mary in the saddle and me on the ground. Mary has better reaction time in the saddle than I do, and she hasn't had as much experience handling him on the ground as I have, so it was a logical choice.

And of course, Mary was also the right choice to run this show because of what a good horsewoman she is. She broke it down into a dozen tiny steps, each done on both sides of the horse so each eye/half of the brain had a chance to see and understand the process.

First we walked them alongside each other, gradually getting closer.

Let's be honest, this was as much or more about getting Connor comfortable with it as it was about Disco learning it. Connor was more uneasy about all this than Disco ever was!

Then we stopped and she slowly worked Connor closer and closer to him, around and around while Disco was standing still, stopping occasionally.

Connor, for his part, thought this was all very suspicious but he played ball. He was very offended when I had to swing the whip at Disco, though!

Next she introduced him to the stimuli he might feel while being ponied, rubbing a Dressage whip over his body before graduating to touching him from above.

Disco: Curious. Connor: Tolerating this shit.

And finally after a good long while, we were ponying. As the ground person, I was only there in case things really went sideways, Mary had full control of him the whole time. 

You could see him concentrating, trying to figure out this new game, trying to figure out how and when to move, coming to understand that when he hit the end of the line he needed to move forward, and when Connor moved, he moved.

Connor had his Suspicious Spooky Ear on Disco the entire time, lol.

Basically the only disobedience the entire time that Mary had to correct was Disco putting his nose in her bubble, being curious about what she was doing up there. She'd push him away, and if he didn't get the memo, he got a swat with the blue sparkle star crop (that Mary bought me as a joke in college like a decade and a half ago, lol. Who knew she'd be starting my own baby with it all these years later?) 

You can clearly see him testing boundaries, finding one, going "Oh, okay," and then going back to being compliant in the below GIF.

Since the first time ponying went flawlessly, I fully expected him to start testing boundaries the second time, when we revisited it a week later with Leah. Connor was always like that with new things: sort of overwhelmed and ultra-compliant the first time, then the second time he'd spend the entire session scheming and testing ways to get out of the work.

Who, me?

But once again, and this time with me in the saddle for the first time, he was...perfect. And this time moving as much or more off of my voice commands than simply following Connor.

In some ways, Disco is lazier than Connor. I think he's going to be physically lazier and not as reactive to stimuli. But in others - mentally, mostly - he's got so much more of a work ethic than Connor ever has. It keeps surprising me, but at this point, I guess it shouldn't.

Good ponies.

Lots of pictures in this post that may or may not display in RSS readers, heads up.

Last week Mary came out just to hang out, and we ended up going to the barn at sunset to pet pony noses.

Connor, as usual, wanted nothing to do with us just in case we were there to catch him. He's not hard to catch anymore, as long as you stick strictly to the routine.

Disco, though, was his usual people-loving self and didn't want to leave our sides, but was still respectful enough that I didn't even need to halter him. He's slowly outgrowing the "explore the world with your teeth" phase, which I am very grateful for.

Hanging out with him slowly turned into Mary giving him a running braid.

While I distracted him.

I didn't need to do much, he didn't move a muscle the entire time.

And then we set him free and he promptly wandered off...

To show uncle Connor his sweet new braids.

Gotta be honest, my second favorite part was seeing his neck without hair for the first time! There's a nice neck under all that hair!

But my favorite part was how good he was. Standing loose in the field for ten minutes while his mane got braided for the first time and still kept coming back for more people love as we walked away. He is just so cool.

Last weekend we had our first early taste of spring. And it was glorious.

It was warmer than it has any right to be in early March, going from wool socks to tanktops in the same week, but I'll take it! On Saturday, Mary, Annie and Jeffrey came down and helped me and Leah put up electric rope around Connor and Disco's turnout field. We used EasySnap insulators to do it, and I can't say enough good things about them. It went SO fast.

They just snap onto the vinyl fence and then you put the rope through and click it shut.

I left the boys in the field while we did it, and we all just kept an eye on them. Disco thought it was THE COOLEST THING THAT HAD EVER HAPPENED TO HIM!!!!! and alternated between checking out our supplies and running around like a maniac.

Connor looking oh so fit lately, if I do say so myself

After that, Annie rode Connor, then I rode Connor, then Jeffrey, Annie and Mary all rode Zippy, Disco's geriatric buddy.

This has to be one of my favorite pictures of the three of them ever. Look at Annie finally fitting into the breeches I bought her two Christmases ago! We used to have to roll the heck out of them.

Sunday was more of the same in terms of weather, and I was motivated to get my life in order.

Making a month's worth of supplement baggies for the boys:

Putting the first coat of polish on the Celeris stiff boots I can finally ride in now that it's not freezing cold:

These are going to age so beautifully. I cannot wait.

Cleaning my jump saddle:

And the Fairfax bridle got fully disassembled and cleaned:

It felt like the world took a deep breath last weekend, and even though they're projecting snow and a high of 33 this coming weekend, we're getting closer and closer to spring.