Cob Jockey

"Jesus take the wheeeeeeeeeellllllllll," I yelled as Connor absolutely bombed down the grid Mary had set up the weekend before. You could practically hear him yell "Cannonballlllllllllll!" right back as he ignored me completely and just Did The Thing. His way.

Thank you for flying Air Connor, shut up and hold on

Connor had more impulsion than either of us knew what to do with that day, so even though I was in a Dressage saddle and had my leathers Dressage-length, I sent him down the grid anyway. Homie needed to burn some energy, and he's schooled enough that I knew I could let that grid and the consequences of his choices do that for me.

Part of the reason, I think, that he had so much impulsion was that damn Wow saddle. I told myself I was buying a cheap old whatever for Disco, and even though it's not yet professionally adjusted to fit him, Connor has been telling me loud and clear he likes it.

The mirrors are really helping too. Nothing like coming down the long side, seeing that his nose is crooked, and fixing the hand that's preventing it from being straight.

 

It's got flaps down to my ankles and blocks that I should hate and might actually be 20 years old and is the old style tree so it weighs more than an anvil and I paid basically $800 for it, so of course he likes it better than the Patrick I spent the better part of 3 years trying to get.

Giving me the world's tiniest collected canter over trot poles and then using that power to jump me out of the tack.

Like, he's going ridiculously well and is happy doing it. He's doing better collected canter than he ever did when we were showing Dressage. The kind that makes me think maybe I could still get my bronze on him.

Not super collected here, but this is a crazy well-balanced left lead canter for this horse. And no underneck.

But I'm not putting that kind of pressure on us. In fact, the only pressure I might be putting on us is a speedbump-level event in November with the rest of my barnmates. He's really enjoying jumping, so why not?

Things that are lost in this GIF: me yelling "That's not how that's supposed to work!" as he cantered all of the ground poles and hit every single one.

We are just having fun. Both of us. And that feels good.

Finally did it sanely. No cannonball. Good boy.

On Saturday, Mary came down without Annie for once, so we spent a long, relaxing afternoon playing with multiple ponies. Up first was me on Connor. Mary asked what I was working on in Dressage, and I said "straightness and collection." 

She got to work building a line of two jumps that we ended up leaving as piles of poles the entire time, because it was just as productive that way. Once I was warmed up, she told me to come at them in a medium canter, and to count out loud, and I got it in an easy 5.

My Pivo is currently on a private beta firmware they shared with me and only me since they're finally taking me up on my offer to help them troubleshoot the S21 Ultra problem. It did good for the most part! I think I should've set it up a little further from the jumps and moved it down to "fast" from "frenzy", but I cannot complain about having Pivo media for the first time since January.

Pretty quickly, she started asking me to do it in 6.

Which was hard, but not impossible. Mary didn't like the way he was tipping his wither coming into the turn and bulging through my right leg though, which are his two cardinal sins in both jumping and Dressage, so she set up cones at both ends and told me I had to make the turn square.

 This was hard.

Vroom, I'm a motorcycle

As I've learned in my lessons with CGP, everything is harder when he's the type of "straight" that I formerly thought of as straight, and now know is banana shaped. If you aren't able to see the tipping and bulging in the GIFs, look at where we end up over the poles - we're not over the middle (white) part on the second set, we're over the green.

Very hard to ride correct related distances if your horse is not traveling straight.

As if the 6 wasn't hard enough, after we got it reasonably well, she told me to ride it in 7.

We're such a good team, when we're wrong about a distance, at least we're always on the same page about being wrong about that distance, lol

I laughed out loud. Was that for real, 7 strides in a line that ride as a 5 stride in a working canter? Yes, she was for real and thought we could actually do that. I was skeptical.

Tipping round the corner we go...

At first, I tried to make the 7 happen with my hands, because that's my default answer for everything. But this is why I love canter poles: I can kinda fake Second Level collected canter with too much hand on the flat, but I absolutely cannot do that over canter poles or jumps. I have to use my seat, my torso position, my thighs and my calves, because I just don't have enough control if I'm riding from my hands. And as CGP said to me in my lesson this week, "You can't just let him take you, you have to be in control of your own body in the collected work."

His wither is finally tipping less on this attempt, but you can clearly see I'm still trying to make it happen from my hand too much.

Finally, I put a lot of effort into controlling my body and stopped pulling, and we NAILED IT:

I am working so hard in this GIF it's not even funny

I mean, helloooooo, look at this boy go:

Can has this canter all the time please?

You can see in the last GIF that he almost looks taller, that he's not diving down with his chest, and that my hands really are following. It was an absolutely fantastic lesson that translated directly into what I'm working on in Dressage right now, and I am so lucky to have a BFF and wingman that can coach me through this!

Good pony

I was supposed to have more or less back-to-back lessons on Connor last weekend, with one on Friday and one on Sunday, BUT on Saturday our roommate called to let us know he had taken an "exit" COVID test for school even though he had no symptoms at all, and tested positive, so we are now quarantining until Dec 2.

It is the most first world of first world problems to say that the only thing I'm upset about is that I'm going to miss riding and lessons, but I think you'll understand when you see how Friday's lesson went. Connor is educated to the point that every lesson, I'm learning in leaps and bounds and I'm so bummed to have to pause that!

On Friday, she asked to get on him first to "show me where he's at", and I had a hard time keeping my jaw off of the floor watching them go. Since mid-September, just over two months ago, she's taken him from being a maybe First Level horse with an incorrect understanding of collection to where all the pieces for 3-1 are passably there.

Full disclosure, her standards for someone being ready for the level are pretty high, so I'm not saying she WOULD show him 3-1 tomorrow, but she COULD.

I got on after her, and I'm going to put the two GIFs of both of us doing the same things on him to show you how differently he goes for her vs me. Not to throw myself under the bus, but to show the difference between a skilled rider that remembers to half halt and me, lol.

Even just warming up, he's a different horse. Look at how different his neck shape is, how the top of his neck is longer than the bottom:

Her warmup walk

My, uh, "just got on" walk

She's militant about never letting him get stiff in the bridle, and told me that "95% of the time, if he feels stiff, the right answer will be to apply the right leg and right rein and hold until he softens". She also said "It means something to him if you close your legs and then briefly close your hands now, put him together." Hello yes these are the kind of first toolkit adult amateur slow learner instructions I am here 👏 for 👏. 

I know the medium trots below aren't scoring an 8, but WOW you guys, the feeling of closing my legs and having INSTANT POWER is something I am not used to. This required a whole other level of core engagement to stay with him. 

Her medium trot

My medium trot, where you can see my abs just completely peace out in the middle from the unexpected force of holding him together

You can really see the difference in her canter vs mine. Mine has less energy (although this WAS 40 minutes into the ride) and the balance isn't nearly as good. Those two phrases could sum up the major differences between our riding in all gaits and movements. I'm not upset about it though, having a horse that I know understands how to go well means I just have to learn how to ride him well, I no longer have the responsibility of also teaching him to go well.

Her collected canter

My collected canter

She didn't intentionally show me any flying changes, but she did attempt a canter half pass (she hasn't done many with him and warned me it was a work in progress) and he gave her a change as a wrong answer. I think it's pretty cool that he knows what a change is well enough to be willing to see if it's the right answer to an ask he doesn't quite understand yet.

She also did a few things I didn't get to do but was happy to see, such as this extremely balanced counter canter. No more motorcycling and hanging on for dear life! 🙌

I did get to do shoulder-in but the Pivo missed it, so you'll just have to watch this clip of CGP and trust me when I say it is so accessible and easy now, it's kind of amazing. No more struggling to manufacture a S-I that's mostly neck bend for me!

I was just on cloud nine. More to come.

This week GP trainer posted a couple of videos of Connor to her FB page that she had her groom take when Connor was going so well in a training ride she couldn't believe it.

"I did not know this pony could SIT this much!" GP trainer says at this point in the video. PS this horse is NOT built uphill at all, every bit of lift here, he is working for.

Then on Friday and Saturday after her rides, she called me just so excited about the progress she had made with him, and also how much she was enjoying riding him. She said she felt like he had opened up to her emotionally, and she was able to be much subtler with her aids, and she couldn't wait for me to ride him in my lesson on Sunday. She said "His canter, I can FEEL a canter pirouette in there, I haven't asked for it yet but you are going to be able to take him so far."

Everything about this bridle is borrowed or temporary except for that Schockemhole browband

I started out riding him like the horse he used to be, with me as the rider I used to be, and the theme of this lesson was basically "He's not the horse you used to ride and you need to step it up for him now."

The Pivo locked onto two horses as they left the ring and followed them into literal space, so very little media today sadly.

She had me stop because she said my lower leg was still popping in the posting trot and we had to fix that. She said "This is going to be not what MW teaches beginner riders, this is going to be a little beyond Mary," which I appreciated because then my brain wasn't thinking "Yeah but Mary said..." in the next few minutes.

She had me think about keeping tension in my knees so that my thighs didn't open and my knees didn't pop over the thigh blocks with each post. This was hard for me because I used to pinch with my knees, which is not what she was asking for here: this was more using them as a pivot point for the lever of the upper leg while keeping the lower leg still. But I had taken "don't pinch" too far, and was riding with no tone in my knees.

Then she told me I needed to keep my Achilles tendon long - NOT my heels down necessarily, but I was shortening it and actively drawing my heel up with each post. She wanted me to think about keeping "as much of your boot below the flap of the saddle as possible," which necessitated a more relaxed back of the knee.

From my warmup, before she started teaching me, so you can see my lower leg flinging about and how poorly Connor is going.

I admit I was a little miffed and annoyed with myself for having to get a "baby level" posting demonstration with her holding my leg in place while I posted on my halted horse, but the difference it made in how he went, oh my gosh! With my leg in place that solidly, all I had to do to get him soft, round, elastic and solid in the contact was to put my legs on and hold the outside rein for a split second.

From there on, I had a horse I did not recognize. His understanding of the contact is SO different, and he wants me to ride him with so much more tone than I've ever used with him, even being a "naturally high tone rider" as MW said. He understood what a half halt was. I was able to put him together after he got a little splatty.

And then.

We picked up the canter.

And holy shit. If I didn't recognize him before, I really didn't recognize him now.

My old home trainer (still feels weird to not call her my trainer) used to have me get after him for more power in the upward walk-canter transition, or even would tell me to avoid picking it up from the walk entirely because he would do a lovely packaged W-C TX with too little power. She was not wrong, either. But GP trainer is getting the same lovely packaged W-C TX with ENORMOUS amounts of sit and power, and I got to feel it on Sunday.

I love this face

I had to learn how to contain and effectively utilize that much power first, and the first time I picked up the canter, I almost couldn't stop him. But she coached me through it and said "You should feel like you can halt and rein back at any moment in any gait, including the canter," which she had said before in the past, but it was never true until yesterday, when I did actually get him to canter-halt and reinback.

I. Was. Stunned. I did it again and again just because I felt like a kid with a new toy on Christmas morning, lol. The canter was so slow, we were almost cantering in place, but it was so POWERFUL.

"His canter is such good quality," she said as we were recapping the lesson, "He's going to have no trouble with flying changes, half passes, really, you're going to be able to take him so far." I laughed and told her how CJF called him the "king of the tranter" when I first got him, and she almost didn't believe it.

One month down, three months to go, it feels like the sky's the limit for what he'll be able to learn! Another lesson coming up on Thursday.

Since I hadn't ridden in...a while...I scheduled a lesson last weekend.  Like, yes, I am perfectly capable of reconnecting all my synapses by myself, but if I have the option, I'm voting for some adult supervision.

Also voting for adult supervision, plz.

It actually ended up being super interesting, a jump ride that helped me figure some Dressage things out. Our main focus was the fact that Connor likes to approach jumps with his nose down and his weight on his forehand, which is part of (but not all of) the reason jumping him often feels awkward.

No idea what you're talking about... Fox River Valley, 2014

Encouraging him to approach jumps with his front end elevated will not only help his Dressage, it will eventually make jumping feel less awkward too.

Awkward?  Nah. Jump Start, 2014

I had two main takeaways from this lesson.  First, engagement.  I don't know what a collected canter should feel like, and I'm struggling to contain him enough to collect him while still keeping the activity behind.  In effect, I can slow the canter down, but not really collect it yet.

The definition of a strung out canter.  Also, compare this photo to the next one to see how much muscle he's packed on in four years!  Wow.  Penny Oaks, 2014

In a Dressage ride, his underpowered canter feels good, it's easy to ride, and it's getting the job done...for now.  You can do that in the Second Level canter work and still squeak out a 60%.  But that's definitely not the case higher up the levels, so I don't want to get complacent with this, and I'm grateful my trainer is pointing this out to me now so I'm aware of it.

Squeaking by with this counter canter right now IDS Schooling Show, 2018

The lesson's main exercise of ground pole > one stride > really small jump made it obvious what a difference having the right and wrong amount of engagement for an activity makes.

So small it would be considered a cavaletti if Connor wasn't 14hh and shaped like a dachshund.

As my trainer said (paraphrasing heavily here), when he approaches fences with not enough "quickness" behind, he doesn't have as many options to get out of trouble if/when (definitely when) we get a bad spot.  When I had the right amount, I got a bad spot, but it still rode really well.

CJF clinic, 2014

The second takeaway was how much my inability to fold over the fence contributes to our jumping awkwardness.  This post is long enough though, and I need some more time to think through this one before I write about it.  It's definitely one part bad riding, one part defensive riding, and one part my super tight hamstrings.

Penny Oaks, 2014

Anyone else using jumping to connect the dots in Dressage right now?

I had only ridden once since my last lesson two weeks ago, so I didn't know what to expect last night.

Do you see that four inch long eye feeler?!  How does that even happen!

My trainer had been riding him though, and she said "I got the coolest canter out of him this week, I didn't even know it was in there.  We'll work on getting it with you tonight."

Seriously, it's over twice as long as all of his other eye whiskers.

Basically, she said we've laid the groundwork physically and mentally for more challenging work, and it's time to start challenging him little by little.  Connor's canter is our toughest gait, and developing a collected canter is a requirement before we show second.


We began by establishing really short (for me) reins that required my hands to be forward, and a very strong, secure core and position.  We then asked him to keep his poll elevated, from my seat and not my hands.  My trainer said he is most on his forehand when he drops his head going into the transition and curls backward.  We needed to think up from the shoulders, out from the chin and up in the poll.

We did a lot of transitions from walk to trot, focusing on keeping the poll up before, during and after the transition.  We also gave him a LOT of breaks - this is not easy for either one of us.

Cookies?

Once we had that pretty good in both directions, we moved on to walk-canter transitions, still focused on short reins and keeping the poll elevated.  She told me to err on the side of holding too much at this stage if I had to, because he's so dedicated to diving down with his nose and doing the "dolphin".

A leg on...two of four corners.

I didn't expect much, the canter so far is a gait I mostly just survive rather than affect, but it was a HUGE difference.  He really sat back and pushed instead of pulling himself with his front end like normal.  My hands were involved, but not as much as my body.  When I really held myself upright with a strong core, he responded with that canter that so impressed my trainer in her rides.  I felt like you could fit two of his canter strides last night into one of his "normal" strides.

Again, this is a pretty big change and a tough thing both physically and mentally, so we didn't go very long each time we cantered.  We focused on a good transition and several good strides after that, then brought him back down, repeating it once or twice more before giving him a neck stretch.

It may not seem like much, but that canter is the key to moving up this year, and that was so different from our usual MO.  I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes!