Cob Jockey

I had my second virtual lesson with my GP trainer on Wednesday, and I STILL have no media because Pivo can't figure out the bug with Samsung's new flagship phone (which by their own admittance, should be the poster child for the right phone to have for Pivo).

Sigh. Anyway.

You could boil this lesson down to "use the inside rein less, use the outside rein more". Starting out, he was a little checked out, so she had me ask for haunches in and then haunches out on the 20m circle at the walk. She said eventually she wanted his front feet to stay on the same track, but not to expect to get there today.

I promise at some point I will collect my thoughts and write in-depth about Pilates, Liz!

 

We started on the left, and, as usual, he was pushing through my right side and tipping his withers to the right, like when I put him into either HI or HO, the first step he took was always to the move the right fore right. She identified that I was overusing my inside rein and underusing my inside leg. She had me take up more outside rein contact, move my outside leg back, and apply my inside leg at the girth, and get aggressive about it.

Within a few minutes, with a much more respectful pony, we were doing this at the trot. Then we moved to use the whole arena for HI/HO (really just thinking about it) at the canter and counter canter, where that whole outside rein/outside leg thing really came home to roost.

We did the short side on the left (true) lead, and then immediately came across the diagonal to start CC to the right, and we stayed on CC for probably 3 laps of the arena as she worked through fixing my biomechanics. She had me sit on the left seatbone, keep the outside leg behind the girth, and then kept saying "more outside rein, more outside rein, left shoulder back, more outside rein."

"F is for friends who do stuff together..."

 

When I FINALLY got the amount of left rein applied that she wanted, suddenly my definition of "a straight horse" changed. I would have told you he was straight before I got the outside rein contact right, but once he was properly in my outside rein, suddenly the "inside rein horse" I had before felt banana shaped.

This had the effect of making the counter canter very balanced and rideable, where before it had always been a "Jesus take the wheel" movement for us. And once we had that, we started playing with moving his body parts around, just slightly.

HAPPY BASEBALL SEASON, Y'ALL!

 

She said what I had just done was what she and her coach (OLGW) do every day in their warmups, although I know it was oversimplified. Can I move the body parts around, and then "lots of counter canter, until it becomes boring, and then BOOM you're going GP!" Haha. She also reiterated something she's said in the past which is that this is why skipping Second Level is a mistake, because movements like CC and the TOH serve as diagnostics for fundamentals that need to be in place before you move up. Just doing them is not enough, but if you're able to do them WELL, you're in a lot better place as you go to Third and Fourth.

So it became really clear that in overusing the inside rein, especially to the right, I have created a banana-shaped pony, and that has to get fixed before things like flying changes are even remotely possible.

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.

Prefacing this post by reminding everyone of my plans for this season: we're taking a year off of rated shows because I know we're not ready to show rated 2nd, but schooling it like it matters is really helping us.  This is the year of schooling 2nd and accepting that we're going to see the comment "needs more" a lot!

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!

I've always appreciated bloggers who tell it like it is and don't sugar coat things.  And I have to think all of the abject positivity from this blog this summer has to be a little annoying.

I promise I will always tell it like it is, and I am.  Things are just good.


We are doing things that were impossible six months ago.  Repeating exercises that made me cry last winter like they are no big deal.

Like last night.  When he was good and on my aids, we did 3 strides counter canter, 1 stride trot, 3 strides canter, 1 stride trot, 3 strides counter canter, 1 stride trot, rinse and repeat all the way down the quarter line - entirely with my seat.  No pulling on the reins at all, just a nice consistent contact.

We were so close to figuring things out at Pony Cup, but still missing a few pieces.

Last winter my trainer had me do something similar, and I cried.  I didn't know that I wasn't able to bring my horse down from the canter because I couldn't get the "stop" message across to him when I was clamping down on him with my thighs, inadvertently sending him forward into my hands, and thinking he was  "running through me."  Now I know - he never was running through me.  Or if it felt like he was, he never wanted to be.

August of 2013.

You couldn't have explained that to me before this summer.  I would have listened, but I couldn't have understood, because riding felt one way to me and I didn't know anything different.

This blog has been up since 2009.  Way before I got Connor, way after I started riding, and there's been a whole lot of telling it like it is, brutal honesty, struggles, thinking I knew what was wrong, not being right, being right but forgetting the answer two rides later, and trying things before we were ready.

I should do a post on all the strange things I've catch ridden while visiting Austen over the years... (The first riding photo of me on this blog, Bella the Wonder Pony, January 2010).

We are never going to stop struggling, I will certainly think I'm right and actually be wrong in the future, and I will always be a slow learner, but for the first time I feel like the doors are open to future progress and I'm leaving the barn with a giant smile on my face every. single. ride.

And most importantly, my horse is happier than he's ever been, and annoyingly positive or not, that's what matters.

The bulk of my lesson on Thursday was spent on two things: counter canter, and bend.

So cute.  Much mud.

We started out with a bit of the spiral in and spiral out through the half pass, and it just wasn't working too well, so my trainer seamlessly switched gears to what I assume is an exercise that she thought of to fix the things that she saw were not working.  It is kind of amazing that she can so subtly switch gears in a lesson like that without calling us out.

We moved onto "pick up the counter canter on the quarterline and think about moving toward the outside rail" i.e. thinking about half pass in the canter.  It took about one trip of that for Connor to get into super Dressage horse mode.

Horse is totally blanketed to the 9's, and yet, I still have to chisel him out from under mud on every exposed surface.

That doesn't mean the exercise got easy once he was that on my aids though.  He kept wanting to give me too much angle, or swing his hindquarters out.

Sometimes it was my fault, I didn't set him up as thoroughly as I could have.  Sometimes it was his fault, and despite my best effort, he picked up the right (wrong) lead anyway.  But he only missed the lead a few times, because generally I could feel when things were going sideways and just wouldn't ask for it unless it was right.

Toward the end, we switched to picking up the counter canter on the centerline, then turning toward the correct lead's direction and doing a half 10m circle back to the rail.  It required so much preparation that I totally did not give him the first time, and I buried him.  He did it, but it was scrambly.  Every other one was good after that though.

Gratuitous photo of Dog #1 (at a very unflattering angle - promise he's not overweight) trying to get husband to feed him.

I am beginning to see a theme as the work gets more advanced - we need more preparation.