Cob Jockey

This is, I guess, less of a Waterloo retrospective and more of a "First 90 days with Kate" retrospective.

This is Disco's new LinkedIn profile picture

See what I mean?

I am at a loss for words to describe what Kate has achieved with him since March 5.

This DOWN TRANSITION, Y'ALL (The GIF sped the tempo up slightly, but it still looks amazing!)

Three months into training with her, he is the most educated horse I've ever ridden; there is such a difference between 'broke' and 'educated'. Connor got to Second Level, sure, but he did it without ever really achieving self-carriage, and so many of the foundational building blocks of Dressage just never developed with me doing all of the riding on him.

Disco feels light, forward, and balanced. Every photo of him I see, his chest is facing forward rather than down, and that's no accident: Kate's style of training emphasizes balance before anything else. He's almost never behind the vertical even for a moment, and the contact is SO alive and obviously meaningful to him. 

All of this gives Kate access to his body parts in the most fluid way imaginable, which is why the lateral work is coming along so well. He's already beginning to learn half pass!

This schooling show comment right here (not from Waterloo) is EXACTLY why I sent him to Kate!

The difference between how he goes with Kate riding him and how he goes with me riding him is so stark. He truly could show First with Kate and possibly even 2-1, but he and I together are a solid Training level pair. When I ride to my absolute best, he goes so well, and when I ride to my usual crooked baseline, he meets me there, confused but obedient. 

Insert potato riding, get potato horse

All that said, I could not have gotten him where Kate has gotten him on my own, which SO validates the decision to send him out, but I can learn to meet him there, and I'm hungry for that challenge. The way Kate trains him and the way she coaches me, I can see a path towards becoming the rider I've always wanted to be and feeling things I've never felt from a horse before.

For the first time in years, I could not stop thinking about horses for probably a week after Waterloo, and that felt so good. I truly can't wait to see what kind of horse I have when I bring him home in October.

Darn my GIF program speeding these up, it's really lovely at real-life speed

That whole weekend of Waterloo, I was struck by how different showing felt this time around, as opposed to the last time I did it five years ago.

Gone were the nerves, the score anxiety, the feeling that I "had" to prove something to someone. There is, of course, a bit of pride to it still, and a bit of wanting to show Disco well on behalf of his progeny and his breeder. But I couldn't bring myself to care about our scores in the 50s, or the score in the 60s -they just fundamentally didn't matter to me on such a deep level.

At any rate, I did tell myself that if I expected better scores, I should have, you know, taken a lesson within the last four years or maybe ridden regularly in the last three.

The overwhelming feeling I had was gratitude and awe. For the first time, I trotted down centerline on a horse I watched grow up from the moment he slid out of his mom, wondering for the next five years what it would feel like when we did this. We did it, and I was present enough to enjoy the moment as it happened.

I still absolutely took my participation awards home (low turnout in the Pony classes, sadly!)

I was also so grateful to be showing with Kate, something I never thought I'd get to do for all of the many years she lived in California, and enjoying hanging out with her fascinating (said with love!!) family and framily.

I also met Eventing a Gogo IRL for the first time after following her blog(s) for the better part of two decades! Hers and Aimee's were the first two blogs I ever followed way back when I started blogging in late 2009.

Disco graciously accepts molestation from total strangers

(It was the craziest thing, I made an Instagram post and tagged her in it, and then she APPEARED AT THE SHOWGROUNDS like I summoned her Beetlejuice-style.)

Possibly most important to me out of anything,  I was amazed at how well my five-year-old stallion handled the atmosphere. Sure, I know he's been showing since he was five months old and has shown three different disciplines in two countries now, but you still never know. 

He went around in a flat/knotted halter all weekend, drank water like a champ, and caused several people to do double-takes and look underneath him after learning he wasn't a gelding. 

The world's most champion drinker from the moment he got off the trailer, even though it wasn't that hot.

He was looky, sure, and a bit backed off at times in the warmup ring when these massive warmbloods rode close to us, but he was far and away a better show horse than Connor was at his first show, which is saying something, because Connor's always been pretty top notch.

His behavior in particular makes me so excited for what we can achieve together. He's just always ready to go to work, and I so appreciate that about him.

One more Waterloo post - riding takeaways next! 

My incompetence at reading a show bill saved my bacon bright and early on Saturday when the show office asked if they could move my 8:00am ride to 11:00am so we could do my pony class measurements at 10:00am. I couldn't believe my ears and felt like I hit the lottery with that one!

We had to do a jog for measurements which was a new one for me.

I ended up needing the time, as I had some fits and starts with braiding. The sewn-in braids I always did with Connor predictably did not work with Disco, and I switched to a running braid technique I had only ever practiced three braids of once. It ended up working really well, and I'll probably write a whole post on that at some point. 

This is a RUNNING BRAID. I'm still amazed. It wasn't too bad for my first attempt at it, although I'm me, so there are definitely improvements I want to do next time.

Kate had the genius idea of entering the same test for all four rides that weekend to really set us up for success. Even still, I'm not at all ashamed to admit that I waved the white flag of adult amateurism hard all weekend, and Kate was very gracious about it. 

Kate read my tests for me and videod at the same time, off of the same phone, AND showed her own Castleberry horse (Belgian WBx Castleberrys Opportunity Knox). I actually don't know how she did it.

For that first test, I had her warm him up for me (I actually didn't know you could do that in Dressage until Kate offered!) and for the first time, I saw that First Level horse she told me she had schooling at home. He was a completely different horse from when I rode him, and it brought into stark relief just how much my own riding would need to improve after I take him home in October. In a good way.

Pictured: potato riding

I also had Kate read alllllllll four of my Training 2 tests. My old trainer would have died of embarrassment, but I was incapable of embarrassment over that. The mental odds were very much stacked against me, and I was going to take every chance I got to offload some stress and ride to the best of my abilities.

This post is long enough, so I'm going to summarize the first three tests (with scores in the mid-upper 50's) as follows:

1. Baby horse does the thing
2. The canter aid is kick and pray right?
3. "Canter surprise", also, OMG there are HORSES OVER THERE DID YOU KNOW THAT

Kate had put a sophisticated canter aid on him (lifting the inside seatbone) that I am more or less physically incapable of doing on my weak side, which I demonstrated by doing leg lifts in the tack stall after the first test. As a result, the canter transitions were a bit of an adventure all weekend even though with Kate he picks it up wonderfully, and he never misses leads with either one of us.

That fourth test, though.

    4. Redemption

I went into the ring feeling confident we could put it all together, and we did exactly that. The showgrounds were a bit quieter, Disco was feeling properly bored, and Kate had helped us to a breakthrough with the canter transition in the warmup.

I had realized I actually haven't ridden many trot-canter transitions over the years. 5-year-old Connor came preinstalled with a walk-canter transition so good, I wasn't motivated to do much with the trot-canter. After I said that, Kate had me ask for walk-canters as if he was an educated horse, and the canter transitions got SO much better, even if they did have a few steps of trot in there.

More on this in the recap post, but "stop riding him like the barely broke baby you dropped off three months ago" was A Theme this weekend.

We ended up scoring a 62%+, and I told him he won the Olympics.

Takeaways post to come! 

In terms of show goals, my only goal for Disco this year is "Do Pony Cup," and at some point I realized that I should, you know, do a practice show before then. 

Despite it being rated, Waterloo was the obvious choice: halfway between us, and we've talked about doing it together for years. Her dad lives silly close to it, and with the facility for sale, we weren't sure how many more opportunities we'd get to make that slumber party a reality.

For sale! Please buy it and keep it a showgrounds!

Entering was such an ordeal in pretty much every way possible, including Kate's vet giving us shot/Coggins records with just stable names on a receipt printed on a dot matrix printer, and not understanding why that wasn't enough, and me not realizing that pony class measurements were only held on Thursday night (we would be arriving on Friday).

That last one ended up being a blessing in disguise, but we'll get there.

Our two stallions stabled side-by-side

It was so, SO good to see this horse again, guys. I really didn't realize how much I miss him or how much he's grown on me in general.

But man, as of Friday night, as we crammed a lesson in very quickly before sunset, I was not entirely sure entering my first rated show in five years on my green five-year-old when I hadn't really ridden in years and had never braided him was a good idea.

(lol)

Look at me, riding my baby horse at a showgrounds for the first time!

He felt incredible, nothing like the baby horse I had given to Kate three months earlier, but I was riding like a sack of potatoes. I could barely turn him, and I couldn't figure out his canter aid. 

Another competitor saw JUST this view of the boys when Kate pulled up and asked if they were Welsh Cobs. I was gobsmacked. In all my years of showing Welsh Cobs, no one has ever properly identified them, let alone from this angle! She made my day.

And complicating things further, in the three months Kate had him, he'd completely outgrown his saddle, and it was tipping me forward badly onto my pubic bone. I actually ended up riding in one of Kate's saddles, a Stubben that worked out wonderfully for both of us, and it's saying a lot that I never noticed that saddle all weekend.

The Most Chill about show stabling. Still has never needed a chain anywhere we've gone.

I had an 8:00am ride the next morning, with Kate's ride a few minutes before mine so she wouldn't be able to coach me. After my lesson, I said "I really think I want to scratch that first test, I just don't think we're setting us up for success between the fact that you won't be able to coach me and having to braid him for the first time and everything."

Kate talked me off the ledge, saying lets stay entered and just see how he feels in the warmup. So that's what we did. To be continued...

We are not quite a month in, and I am already so, so glad I've sent Disco to Kate.

A photo of two stallions hanging out together!

Kate videos some of her training rides for me, and narrates them, and in watching those, I've realized that it's my first time actually seeing this process of a young horse being started. And there are times where she'll laugh something off that I know I would have taken too seriously, or where she released when she felt him consider the idea of what she wants, when I would have hung on to the ask too long, and it just crystallizes how right the decision was to not do this myself.

It's made me appreciate the trainer as a professional. Kate has done this so many times, she's performing a repeatable process much the same way I do at work, and Disco is benefiting from her experience with the process in the clarity she brings to his training rides, and therefore the relative speed at which he's learning - already doing things at not quite five that Connor was closer to 10 before I stumbled into those skills with him.

Baby SI, HI and counter canter loops already!

It has also put me so at peace with being an amateur. I greatly admire my amateur friends who have started their own horses, but I'm not that kind of amateur. I'm not going to start the number of horses in my lifetime that Kate has, because I spend my days being a professional in other areas, and that's okay!

But no matter how impressed I am with how far he's gotten under saddle already, Kate giving him friends and social situations makes me the happiest. 

So far, Disco has been turned out unsupervised with one of her geldings, and has gotten supervised turnout time with another gelding and with his fellow Castleberry Cobs class of 2021 brother from another mother, Oxley, the Warmblood cross that Kate owns, who is also still intact. They haven't seen each other since they were weanlings, and they were so happy to be turned out together.

But at the end of the day, raising him in a social situation and then insisting on only sending him to trainers who are also willing to keep him in a social situation seems to have been the right call. He is just a horse who likes hanging out with other horses (and being the low man on the totem pole, no less), and he knows no other way.

Grooming each other! Don't mind Oxley's little riblets, he's going through a growth spurt.

For years now, I've known I would send Disco out for full training in his four year old year, once I got him to the stage that required finesse.

When it slowly became clear that Kate's move back to the Midwest would happen in the second half of his four year old year, the whole plan crystallized: there's no one else I would rather send him to for this phase of training. Kate's ability to "speak horse", her clear "boss mare" body language, her experience taking horses through the levels of Dressage, and her genuine enthusiasm for him and his career after she rode him last summer all make her the top choice by a mile. 

At home last August

Going to Kate also meant he would stay intact for now (he still earns the right to keep them through good behavior every day of his life, and that will never change). He will always be a horse first, a performance horse second, and a breeding stallion third, and I wouldn't have hesitated to collect/freeze and geld him if being a stallion held back my options on training and/or held back his options on socialization. 

Temporary solitary confinement at his new home

Not too many trainers will take on an outside stallion for full training, and even fewer (probably zero, and I don't blame them) would attempt to give that stallion a turnout buddy. Disco has always been turned out with others to this point in his life, and I didn't want full training to come with the stress of sudden and confusing loneliness for him. Kate is willing to try him with someone else after he gets settled in, and that means so much to me.

The moment he realized this is not a vacation

So, last week, at the age of four years and ten months, we packed him in the trailer and drove him 7 hours north. And it didn't come a moment too soon for my personal life, which is going to turn upside down in a very "growthy" kind of way this year - including, among other major life changes, taking the house down to the studs and living in the camper for a few months before my partner and his kids move in with me. 

It's all good things, all very intentional things, but having one less horse on my plate ended up being more of an immediate relief than I was even anticipating.

He'll be up there for at least four months, and after that, we'll play it by ear. 

Be good, buddy. 

"Hello, is this Jenifer?"

"Yes, it is."

"Hi Jenifer, this is Dr. Tanner. I have good news: Disco doesn't need surgery!"

Did you know horses can give themselves the equivalent of a root canal? I didn't either until Dr. Tanner called the morning after Disco's CT scan.

Thought I was dropping him off for an extended stay, but I would be back the next morning, who knew

Turns out, by the time we got Disco to Rood and Riddle (5 weeks after discovering the fracture), he had laid down enough new tertiary dentin to cover the pulp canals, which meant the fractured tooth didn't need to come out.

I was, in a word, relieved. Between closing on the farm (aka paying lawyers), getting under contract on the house (more lawyers), buying a Hay Hut (no lawyers here) and cancer treatment for one of the canine members of the family (just a vet, but damn this was pricey), October has been an expensive month even before you considered Disco's dental adventures. While I haven't received the final bill yet, it should be closer to $2k than $9k, which is a win. 

Fascinating

I also felt less bad about how long it took to get him in. I first called in mid-September, and between the surgeon's schedule and my schedule, the earliest we could get him in was mid-October. While I feel bad for the pain he must have been in for at least part of that, if we had gotten him in any earlier, he might not have had time to lay down that new tertiary dentin, and I assume (I didn't ask) we might have had to do the surgery.

It does leave me with some questions - does this always happen with fractured teeth? Should I always slow roll surgery on a fractured tooth if the horse isn't in immense pain? Did I just get lucky? - but overall, I'm just relieved to put this chapter behind us, even if it hasn't meant I've gotten back on him.

But more on Disco's winter plans later.

I've only ridden Disco once since the Kate clinic, but boy do I have a legitimate reason.

At least it was a good ride.

Just after the Kate clinic, he started not finishing his feed. Long story short, I thought we were either dealing with ulcers or teeth, and started out treating it like ulcers, although I knew he already had a routine dental coming up anyway since he's on a 6 month schedule right now, so we were covered either way.

WELL. Guys. It was decidedly not ulcers. 

Disco has a fractured first molar, tooth 309 in dentist parlance. We have no idea how it happened. We do know that it happened in the last six months because it was normal at his last dental in February. And we suspect based on when he went off his feed that it happened in the last month.

Healthy 409 shown in the lower right for comparison.

My dentist immediately referred me to Rood and Riddle. We are equidistant to Purdue University and R&R, but she said R&R is who you want for this one. Before they saw the photos, R&R quoted me a range of prices between $2,300 and $9,000, because depending on how it cracked, it could either be done under standing sedation and one overnight in the hospital, or it could require the "most advanced extraction type" which requires fully flat out sedation and 3-4 nights in the hospital.

Unsurprisingly, my man has expensive taste. After seeing the photos, Dr. Tanner suspects the that the tooth is fractured in just about the worst way possible, with the root likely still present across the entire tooth, but the above-the-gum part missing across half of it. He needs to go fully under for this procedure which they called a Lateral Wall Alveolectomy.

As you can imagine, that hit me with a big thud. We were supposed to be sending him off to Kate's soon, not dropping almost 5 figures on a surgery. But it makes it feel better to know it's worth it: since the dental we've been soaking his feed, and he immediately started cleaning his feed pan again, so I know he's in pain.

They can't get him in until mid-October, and I have no idea when he'll be able to wear a bit again at this point. So, we're in a holding pattern for now.

HORSES! 

"He's not dull, but the quickest way to make a horse dull and resentful is by shouting all the time,"

There's a common refrain in basically every lesson you hear Kate Little of Better Every Ride (come at me, Google, she deserves it!) teach: horses think slowly but react quickly. Connor reacts quickly and explosively first and then he'll think, slowly and after the fact. New concepts took longer to get confirmed on him because of it - it often took more than one session before he would retain something new from ride-to-ride. 

Connor's part-leaser glowing after her first riding lesson in over 20 years

Disco could not be more different. He has this testosterone-fueled "Nothing can hurt me so I'm not afraid of anything" coolness to him that, at least in him, affords him the ability to think about a situation before reacting. He learns so fast and retains new concepts immediately, but reacts so slowly.

Photo by Liz

I often interpret this in the moment as Disco being dull - even large aids, like a whack with the whip, are met with a shrug. It has made working with him frustrating for me at times, because I'll apply escalating aids until I run out of aids and I'm left feeling like I don't have anything left in my toolkit.

Across four sessions, Kate gave me some incredible tactical advice - new aids and concepts that I'm using immediately with good effect. New ways of thinking about contact and balance even in the green horse. New moments of feeling, like feeling him truly step sideways in a leg yield for the first time and truly shifting his weight back in the halt. 

Working on his sticky "go" button by being "annoying like a chihuahua"

Those were all wonderful, but the biggest thing I got out of the clinic? He's only going to end up dull if I make him that way. As much as I think I've slowed down and softened my asks since I've become Kate's student, I need to go in even slower, even softer. He can back in the groundwork with the pressure of a feather on the knot of the halter, and he can learn to be that light in the rest of the work too, if I allow him the chance.

It all crystallized for me when I saw Kate ride him on Sunday. She got on and did the same exercises I had been trying awkwardly to do for the previous 20 minutes, but she did them differently. Loops in the reins when mine were taut. Escalating aids that moved to 'annoying' instead of 'louder'. Opening outside reins that invited him over warmly rather than tentatively. 

Disco completely relaxed with Kate on his back

She got off and had this huge grin on her face "He's REALLY cool. He's going to be something special." and I knew then that I needed to stick to my original plan of sending him out for training at this point in his career. 

He needs to learn the next set of building blocks from someone who makes learning easy for him and from someone so competent in the young horse starting process, they're able to effortlessly identify what's a phase and what's a career-limiting personality trait. That's not something you develop being an adult amateur that starts maybe two or three horses over a lifetime.

"You don't have to send him out," she said later. "You are capable of learning how to teach him this stuff." And the funny thing about that is that I describe Kate's lesson style as "whatever you feel like you can't do, she makes you feel like you can do it." Every time I thought I couldn't keep a stallion, or couldn't start baby Eva, or anything else, her lessons left me feeling like I could do it. 

There is something about having Kate in your corner that makes so much seem possible, which is why I didn't ignore the feeling of peace and certainty I felt as I watched him melt into the right answers under her on Sunday. That's all I've ever wanted for this horse - to make the right answers easy and to see how far he can go.