Cob Jockey

Seeing Moo last weekend crystallized some nagging feelings about Welsh breeding and showing I've had for a while. I love this breed, why am I not more passionate about getting involved in every single part of it?

Maybe the most fun I've ever had at a Welsh Show

The answer, I think, is that I'm a performance person first and a Welsh person second, and there are a lot of Welsh out there that can't perform in a sporthorse way. There are, certainly, a lot that can and some breeders that do focus on it. But those often aren't the ones that we (as a breed/association/judges, UK and US both) put up as our "Supreme Champions", which is a halter class. And while we have performance classes at breed shows too, quite a lot of them actually, they don't get the same breathless respect as "Did you hear who the judge put up as Supreme?", which in turn does influence breeding decisions and the overall direction of the breed. 

It bothers me that we (breed/association/judges, UK and US both) wouldn't pin this horse very well in halter.

He didn't just win at NDPC, he DOMINATED his divisions (Second Level and Second Level Freestyle). Nobody else was even close to him.

 

Compared to this, which does pin well, both in terms of conformation and unfortunately in terms of weight also. You almost have to get your horses overweight to pin well in-hand at the more prestigious shows, which doesn't sit well with me.

Real photo colored in to protect the innocent.

So I started down a rabbit hole inside my own head.

What are we doing to promote good canters in Welsh Cobs? If our Supreme Champion only ever has to walk and trot and stand still in hand, are we inadvertently breeding poor canters into our horses? I think we are on the whole, although certainly not everyone is, and I don't think anyone means to. The back conformation above can do a big, ground covering driving trot with his hind legs out behind him, but he won't have a sport horse trot or canter.

More plz.

 

Without outcrossing - are we fundamentally changing the breed if we breed sportier trots and canters into Welsh Cobs? One of the hallmarks of a Welsh Cob IS that efficient, ground covering trot that goes out, not up. They were bred to have a trot stride as big as a full-size horse, keeping up with warhorses while pulling supply wagons and needing minimal food along the way. They were ridden also, but they weren't so much selected for that as they were driving.

Connor doesn't have a great sporthorse canter. Lisa HAS bred better canters into successive generations of her horses since the Connor days (20+ years ago!!) which is one of the reasons I love her program.(Yes, this was a counter canter.)

If we fundamentally change the breed, is it still a Welsh Cob? If it canters up rather than out? If we select for pushing power rather than pulling power? This is a question by itself, but see next question.

Also never scored well in Welsh halter classes

Are we (rare breed people using their animals in sport) trying to make everything a Warmblood? I don't think so, but I do think we're trying to adapt our animals to what people want to use them for in 2025. Just like I used to say with my old house I renovated, I'm always going to respect it for what it is and I won't try to turn it into what it isn't, but that doesn't mean it needs to be a museum to a time gone past. It's allowed to evolve.

I don't need you to be a Warmblood, I just need you to be you.

What is it that makes a Welsh Cob a Welsh Cob?  To me, it's a compact, hardy animal with a strong sense of self-preservation that can be trusted to generally make good decisions in their own interest and the interest of their human. They blur the lines between pony and horse, have great hair (duh), a relatively upright neck, and connect deeply with people in a way not every breed does. They have a sense of humor and a conformation that enables them to do a lot of different sports well, even if they're never going to the Olympics in any of them.

So...what can we do about it? I have some thoughts on that too, but that's a post for a different day. 

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.

Mary coached the shit out of me, telling me exactly where she wanted my hands (holding the last 6" of rein but no more, and with my hands also firmly on my grab strap), where she wanted my legs (in a scissor position to ask on the first quarter of the circle, then bumping in the second quarter), and where she wanted my body (upright and sitting into the saddle, to help him discover that sitting and pushing with his hindquarters made all the uncomfortable balance issues better).

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...

After getting home at 8pm the previous night, I was up bright and early at 6:30am to hustle back to Cincy for a 10am lesson on Wednesday.

I had two sound bites in my mind from the day before - subtler aids and left shoulder forward. In this lesson, I started out struggling with downward transitions - to the point that I asked her to explain the aids for the downward to me like I was stupid, because I was sure I was asking wrong. Either I couldn't keep the energy through them, or I couldn't get him to slow down at all.

She had an idea. She grabbed her piaffe pole and said, "Okay, you're going to ride a piaffe so you can feel how much activity and power and collection you need. Once you understand this feeling you won't forget it." And we did that, with her walking next to us. Then she said, "Okay, I'm turning you loose and I want you to trot forward with the piaffe feeling."

Something clicked in that moment: I could not trot with the piaffe feeling unless I thought "shopping bag elbows", which for me is a key phrase that describes a feeling of weight in my elbows, elasticity in my hands, and drops my pelvis into place. The moment I got that feeling and kept my calves on, he became a beach ball underneath me, big, bouncy and seemingly full of air and positive tension. The moment I lost that feeling, he splatted flat and I was back in that spot of not being able to ask for downward transitions. 

So I HAVE TO be sitting correctly to ride him. Just one more lesson in why biomechanics matters SO much in Dressage.

Sadly the Pivo focused on everything but me in this ride, including 30 straight minutes of a wall, sigh.

That wasn't the only massive lightbulb moment in this lesson though.

I have long lamented that something about my canter mechanic shuts Connor down and makes him nod his head. Watching other educated riders ride him over the years, I can immediately see a difference, but I never knew what I was doing to cause it.

2018

Then in yesterday's lesson, CGP told me to put my shoulders forward and my butt back "out behind me".

And I swear to you.

What you're about to see felt, to me, like I was sticking my butt out over the cantle and leaning over to touch my nose to his mane, no lie.

But uh, that's not what it looked like. Our brains are such liars.

I have never seen a video of myself so with the horse in the canter. And it felt that way too. I kept looking in the mirror, first because I could not believe "sticking my butt out" fixed such a huge problem, and second because I couldn't believe what I was seeing, because it didn't match the way I felt at all.

No head nod. No driving him down onto his forehand. Just a good canter.

I'm beginning to think I can learn to ride my "new" horse!

Connor has basically been in full training for two weeks now with me traveling so much, and my trainer knew what she wanted to focus on in my first lesson back: the canter.

So wish we would have done these pictures after my Megan/Kate lesson but they're still good pictures even if my position is different now. PC: Austen

I can come up with a whole lot of excuses for the canter: it's not his best gait naturally, I was afraid of cantering for basically my whole childhood, we've focused a ton on his trot, CJF called him the "king of the tranter" once...I could go on.

May of 2013

He's never been particularly quick behind, and I'm very much a passenger at the canter.  It's not a gait I feel like I have much influence over, and even after I got over my fear of cantering, it remained sort of a survival thing.  Whew, great, did that, check it off the ride list, it's over!

But like, that's not good enough anymore.  A few weeks ago, Austen got on Connor, and it was eye opening to see how different his canter looked with her and with me.

Her:

To be totally fair, there was a little bit of "WTH is this lady asking me to do?!" tension in this photo too.  Turns out I am pretty easy on the little guy, haha.  Also: Austen was riding without stirrups in a child's Dressage saddle so the fact that she was able to be this effective is a minor miracle 😂

Me:

"Bleh"

Two weeks after that realization that my ineffective riding was contributing to the blah canter, I had that lesson with Megan where we just started to delve into my lack of influence at the canter toward the end of the lesson.  And finally, tonight I combined the ideas I started to explore with Megan with what my trainer was teaching after working on his canter herself for two weeks, and it started to click.

Early stages of understanding this feel here, so take this for what it's worth, but it feels like I need to intentionally be slightly quicker with my seat than he is with his legs in order to encourage him to "stay" with me.  There's more to it than that, but that's what I'm focusing on right now.

And it worked.  The canter felt very different.  Punchy, like I could take a jump out of it.  And it's always nice when the Equisense data backs up what I feel:

That is an absolutely staggering elevation number at the canter for us!

I'm looking forward to playing with this more.  Time to start being effective at the canter!

So far, I've kept the jumps so low they would be cavaletti to anyone not riding a horse shaped like a dachshund pony.  They're tall enough that he makes an effort, but small enough that we don't get into trouble doing this on our own.  Which is like...8".  Don't laugh.  Okay, I'm laughing.

How did I ever jump 2'7?  Gotta keep reminding myself the height is not the point of these.

I'm not the best at setting distances, but the only way to improve is to do it, right?  In the grand scheme of me creating jumping exercises over my life (which has not happened often), these actually rode really well.

I did fix this one so it was at least centered after I took this picture.

PS - didn't jump this, but he found this jump to be TERRIFYING.  Even though he's totally jumped it at the old barn.

I'm trying to jot down notes in the Equisense before I leave the barn this year.  This was Sunday's:


Some small part of my brain thinks that since this is the first time we'll have ever done poles/jumping consistently, maybe we'll wake up one morning 8 months from now and he'll be totally comfortable over starter level fences without either of us even noticing.  And the other small part of my brain knows we're just doing this to improve his Dressage and for a mental break from Dressage.  Either way, however it ends up, it feels like a win to add something like this in once a week.

Let me start out with a still from last night's lesson that gives me ALL THE HEART EYES.  My horse has never looked like this in a canter still before!



For my lesson on Tuesday, I told my trainer I would like to use poles to help adjust the canter.  She came out firing with two exercises.

SO CUTE

That is NOT an average but a point-in-time snapshot of canter front end elevation, BUT 15.4cm is the highest front end elevation he's ever registered at the canter, by about 1 cm.

When I got to the barn on Saturday, there was a jump exercise left over in the arena from one of the eventers gearing up for Heartland.  I thought it might be fun to treat it like a cavaletti exercise within my Dressage ride, so I modified the second element from a tiny oxer to a tiny crossrail.


This line was set up for a big moving warmblood gelding and the distances were wrong for Connor, which I actually liked.  There was no "right" for us in this exercise: we would either have to shorten or lengthen the canter - AKA what is really hard for us right now.

Side view

In the canter lately, I've continued to work on following forward with my arms better, as well as sitting more on the outside hind and using my seat to encourage him not to dump so far onto his forehand at the end of each stride, a la this Mary Wanless video my trainer sent me.

The girl on the left is basically me.

The coolest part about the exercise didn't really happen within the line itself, although it rode really well for us in both the short and long variations.  The coolest parts came in between.  I've never had great adjustability in the canter, and most of the time when we were jumping in the past, I'd have to either bring him back down to the trot to regroup the canter after a line like this, or cowboy up through the line a second time with a splatty canter.

December of 2016.  Splat splat splat SCRAMBLE jump WHEEEEEE

Imagine how cool it felt on Saturday then, when I was able to land, ask him to put himself back together, feel himself actually put himself back together, and proceed to do the line a second time with a quality canter.  It felt like he lifted underneath me and shifted his weight back rather than running along strung out like we were both used to in the past.

Equisense totally backed me up on that too.  13.5cm elevation in the canter is 1-2cm higher than our usual average.

For some reason, I can feel the inside hind better when I make the turn to approach a line like this too.  In between doing the line both directions, I played with counter canter and boy did he get straight.  We actually did the 20m half counter canter circle from 2-2 for the first time in its entirety on Saturday!

Bottom line: we need more cavaletti in our lives.  Super productive ride!

Last Friday I had a lesson.  We've definitely hit a plateau, which is fine, or at least that's what I keep telling myself after six straight weeks of amazing rides and now a string of mediocre rides.  You can't have progress without getting out of your comfort zone...right?

One of us is excited for our lesson!

We started out getting him really good and on my aids and using both hind legs equally.  Lots of counterbent circles and lateral work.  Also that SI - half circle - half circle - travers movement from 2-2.  I am kind of in love with what that movement does for us right now.

Not quite the best he got this day, but look at my torso moving forward instead of backward with each trot step!  #progress

Once he was really on my aids, my trainer had us work on the canter.  All winter I've been working through the laundry list of items NK dumped on me during our last lesson in October, and the canter is the last thing we haven't yet focused on.  I told my trainer recently I want to focus on the canter these last two months of winter.

She put out two sets of parallel poles and, to greatly oversimplify her instructions, told me to canter through both sets of poles.  To the right, this was REALLY hard.  Like, we completely missed the poles sometimes

I had every intention of going through the second set of poles here and...didn't make it.

This exercise preyed on all of our weaknesses.  I turn into a pretzel on the right, I'm still so used to affecting the canter with my hands that I struggled to do my new "forward" hands, he runs through the outside aids (I'm probably causing that somehow) so it was tough to hit the poles, he was basically a motorcycle, he only has one canter speed, I have almost no ability to affect the gait...


To the left things were better:


I'm sitting better, I'm more upright, he's way straighter and not as inclined to run through my outside aids.  In comparing the two videos while writing this post, I'm seeing an overuse of the inside hand to the right but not the left, which makes sense.

I can tell there's a lot to unpack that was highlighted by this exercise, and I'm interested to see where my trainer takes my request to "focus on the canter" from here.

Continuing with the outtakes from the "Not Blogworthy" photo folders I have...

Hoo boy.  This was 7 months ago!

That photo is from the test in which the judge called out his "head nodding" and specifically said my rigid elbows were causing it.  That stung - but I knew it was true.

Literally pulling backwards with each stride

For whatever reason, that feedback has finally stuck since my lesson last week when my trainer came out guns blazing on this subject, and I have done an above average, unusually good job of implementing that position change.  And it has made THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE. 

Say what?  Is this my horse?  Is that me?

I've had to completely re-learn how to ride the canter.  I had been using so much hand, I'd been keeping Connor from using his body effectively.  First I had to let go and just accept him splatting on the forehand while I taught my hands how to move forward instead of back.  But then I needed to fix the splat...

So since I don't know what I'm doing, I googled "how to get horse off forehand at the canter" and was led to a helpful COTH thread that, in summary, said, "try leg yielding at the canter."

I did that and oh MAN did that work.

What up, highest symmetry score ever.

I found it was most effective to leg yield off my left leg in both directions, (probably because I was actively engaging the weak leg in both directions?) so quarter line to rail on the left rein and rail to quarter line (we didn't really get there, but it's the thought that counts) on the right rein.  We also played with some counterbending in the canter.

This GIF was taken eight days after the one above it!  It looks so different!

Toward the end of the ride, I felt his front end lighten a ton and his neck looked like it grew six inches taller.  Of course I didn't video that ride (GIF above is from a few rides later), but the Equisense did show some of our highest canter front end elevation numbers to date at that point in the ride:

Side note, the newest Equisense app update can now do minute-by-minute breakdowns of your rides in certain metrics like this one.  SO COOL!  No more guessing.

All the heart eyes!

I just can't believe this is the same horse, and that that one position flaw has made this big of an immediate difference.  Just amazing.

His neck is above his withers and his nose is out in front of him and not curled into his chest on the downbeat of the canter.  Compare that to the photo at the beginning of this post.  I am just amazed.