Cob Jockey

I'm trying - t-r-y-i-n-g - to structure Connor's weeks with some intention lately, and that includes making sure I'm not drilling him even when what I need myself is absolutely being drilled.

He appreciates it, I'm sure

That includes doing cavaletti and poles 1 or 2 times a week, or jumping if Mary is around. I'm not overthinking it. I'm not doing insanely complex exercises. I'm just Doing The Thing.

Yesterday I wanted to do some canter poles, and I hoped to set it to where the distances would fail miserably if I came in with too much pace and on the forehand. To do this (see my previous statement about being intentional), I measured with my new fiberglass tape reel and then texted Mary to make sure I was in the ballpark. I really have very little experience setting poles or jumps of any kind.

If I'm working on learning how to set poles for the first time in my life, I'm not going to learn how to do it wrong. I'm going to use this AND pace off the distance until I really get a feel for pacing off the distance.

I used my barnmate's triangle as the first pole because I'm lazy, and then had a two stride to a one stride. Just as I hoped, when we came in all disorganized to the first one, Connor took the opportunity to overachieve with his new "super comfortable jumping thanks" body. It felt a lot more wild than he ended up making it look in the video.

Where we started

 

So next it was okay, how do I collect the canter without pulling? And you know what, for the first time, I feel like I'm starting to get this concept. Sit up, keep the leg, and follow a little less with my seat. And try to half halt, although that concept is still a work in progress for me on Connor (but not on Aeres, who has the lightest easiest half halt on the planet).

Where we ended up

All in all, it wasn't perfect, but we both learned something and it was a good change of pace.

We're in the last two weeks of Connor's four months of full training, so I'm going to Cincinnati a lot the next two weeks to soak up all I can before CGP leaves for a relatively short Florida trip and I'm left here alone in the cold with my "new" pony.

Who is THE CUTEST not that I'm biased <3

 

No, your eyes don't deceive you: that's jump tack at a Dressage barn. CGP rents out one of her barns to a well-known Ohio eventing trainer, and every Saturday at 1pm there's a group of Dressage ladies that take a "jump" lesson from her, including CGP herself. I finally made it to one last Saturday. I say "jump, because it was a ground pole lesson, with four of them raised 6" on one side by the end. Not jumping oxers here, people!

Most of the time we started with the four trot poles, until the end when we rode it from the opposite direction.

The poles stayed the same throughout, but we gradually increased the complexity of the pattern we rode through them, so this would be a great exercise for someone riding alone at home. We rode the entire thing at the trot, and it demanded precision in the figures and good turning skills - so exactly what I got drilled on by CGP the previous weekend.

Even through this horrible photo (sorry buddy) you can see how much muscle he's packed on.

We never visibly struggled with it, partially because even the tight turns are easy on a pony, but the event trainer perceptively said, "His evasions aren't super obvious to someone standing on the ground, but I'm sure they are in the saddle. He likes to put his head down and rush, so it's not as obvious as [other rider's Saddlebred that wants to become a giraffe] even though both make the exercise harder. Make him slow his feet down and take bigger, loftier steps."

Review coming soon - I am kind of in live with there Majyk Equipe sparkle pads

Something in my brain clicked in midair and I let go with my hands, sat up, and suddenly found myself with a slower, more rideable pony. So for the zillionth time, DON'T F****** PULL ON THE REINS!

I hope I can join this lesson more in the future!

I have not been super great about doing Cavaletti Sundays, but I did it this week!  I pulled out Jimmy Wofford's "Gymnastics: Systematic Training for Jumping Horses" and did Exercise 1, which is a trot pole exercise.

Yes it involves 16 poles and PRECISE measuring (says Jimmy) and it took forevvvvvvvvvver to set up...which is why we do cavaletti on Sundays ha

The poles are set up in the arena the way they are laid out on the page.  "A" is set to working trot length, "B" is variable, "C" is extended trot and "D" is collected trot.  Jimmy has you go back and forth over A, then over the working trot distance in B, then spiral in and out over B, then do C, then do D, and finally you string them together.

On Sundays we wear white (just kidding, I just wanted to play with liners)

Jimmy advocates getting the horse to the poles and then letting them figure out the exercises without micromanaging, but he's developing an eventer and I'm developing a Dressage horse, so for the most part I focused consciously on asking for what was in front of us - the way I saw it, the poles would help reinforce my not-so-expert aids for each gait.

Connor really enjoyed himself and quickly figured out what was going on.  He had the easiest time with the collected poles, followed by the extended poles and the "B" poles.  The working poles he had the hardest time with, but, I mean, the point of the exercise isn't to do it all perfectly, and he did get better as we went along.






This exercise rode so well, I'd love to say I'll work through the rest of the Wofford book, but it's unfortunately very reliant on mid-ride jump height changes and I'm usually riding alone, so we'll see.

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.

This was the first weekend in a long time that I didn't have anything going on, and I knew where I was going to spend it!

With this derpy, derpy animal

On Friday night, I made my goal for the ride "adjustability."  I wanted two different trots, two different canters.  I tend to spend too much time in one trot and one canter, and I really need him to be paying attention to me within the gaits.  He felt freaking phenomenal, so good that I quit at a half hour.

He'd had two pretty intense Dressage rides in a row, so I wanted to change things up a bit with a cavaletti exercise on Saturday.

(PS, is there still a caveletti bloggers club and if so can I join?  I need ideas!)

I don't really have cavaletti but I have jump standards with holes all the way to the bottom, so that works!  The idea of this one was that we'd do it as a figure 8 at the trot.  I liked it, because it would require both of us to pay attention to both the bend and the inside hind, and it would come up quickly for us.

We struggled with the exercise on the left turn especially.  Right was no problem.  I did it at a collected trot, and was somewhat surprised that he actually did trot it every time, rather than trying to jump it.

By the time I quit with the cavaletti exercise he was feeling so good and we were only about 25 minutes into the ride, so I decided to play with canter-walk transitions.  They're still super rough, but we averaged around 2 trot steps which is way better than the 4-5 at the beginning of the summer.

Then we hacked out around the field:





The grass is so tall in spots, up to his eyeballs, I couldn't blame him for grabbing a to go box.  If he was a sale horse I wouldn't let him grab grass like this, but he's not.

No filter, the grass really is still this green.  It's been a great year for grass and hopefully hay too.

Of course, he couldn't exactly chew it with the bit in, so:

"Bleh" - Connor, probably

I also got my tack locker cleaned and organized, my tack cleaned, and my trailer re-organized.  All in all, a pretty fantastic Saturday!

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!