Cob Jockey

Connor's breeder told me last night that it makes her sad to visit this blog and not see any updates.  And I am not one to make people sad!  So I'm going to do my best to keep going.

I haven't had a proper Dressage lesson in about a month, so last week for my lesson I came out guns blazing in Dressage tack, ready for a biomechanics beatdown...and then my favorite barn rat said, "Hey, I think she's teaching XC lessons in the big field tonight."

Cue fastest tack change ever - XC vest, breastplate, saddle, girth, bridle, and fly bonnet.  Favorite barn rat was impressed.

Favorite barn rat multitasking by keeping Connor entertained (he's licking her hand) and texting while I was in the bathroom.

The lesson started out - no joke - with me breezing my Welsh Cob around the field like a racehorse, bridged reins and all, until he got tired.  He came out with so much energy, there was no way the lesson was going to be productive unless I took some of the edge off.  In my warmup, when I asked for a canter depart, he bucked so hard my neck snapped, which has never happened before.

(Found out later he'd been in all day due to heavy rain. Don't blame the little guy a bit.)

It really took five or so minutes of cantering and galloping before he stopped accelerating anytime he got the chance.  Toward the end, he really flattened out into a true ground covering gallop, which delighted my trainer, who says the canter and gallop will always be his weakest gaits and he needs to figure it out for himself and get comfortable in those gaits more often.

The best part about all that was, he was at his worst and I still never felt unsafe.  On a lot of horses, that would have been a lunging situation.


We ended up having the BEST lesson!  The highlights were:
1. Getting a true collected canter, for a long period of time, that enabled me to take the up bank, do a tight rollback in the direction of whatever lead he landed on, back to the upbank.  With a bigger canter, that would not have been possible.
2. Cantering the down bank for both of our first times ever - and it felt so smooth compared to trotting it!
3. Cantering the faux ditch for both of our first times ever, and that also felt smooth.
4. Cantering the down bank and doing a less severe but pretty small rollback immediately to canter the ditch - and not even blinking.

I came out of that lesson beaming.  Every moment I ever questioned that horse being an eventer melted away.  Sure, we have been working on those things for years, and I'm sure he'll find lions under down banks at other facilities, and I'll have to keep my guard up forever, but he CAN do these things without scrambling.

What a good boy!  Bigtime bath for the sweaty guy after all that cantering and jumping:

First up!  The Blogger TPR Challenge blog hop closes in 14 hours.  Get on it!  So far L. Williams is winning the gift card...because she is the only entrant.  Womp womp.

Second up - you may notice it's been a week since I last blogged.  My life has changed in ways I both predicted and could never have predicted in the last two weeks, (no, not pregnant).  The only part I can share right now is that we're couch surfing/living out of a suitcase with friends because we sold our old house before getting the keys to the new one (hopefully today), which is all kinds of fun with two big hairy shedding dogs with separation anxiety.

Anyway.

Horse related:

We did on-property XC schooling yesterday.  At home, we have multiple banks, ditches, a corner, logs, trakheners, stone walls, and other things, all no higher than novice, which is pretty cool.

September 2014 Cathy clinic.  Baby corner in the background, the jump we're over is adjustable height.

The good: he jumped a faux ditch almost without hesitation on the first try.  We did a ton of that at our XC schooling in late April, so that makes sense.  He was brave and game and quiet over most things, except for a head flipping incident after a log midway through a course, but I think I caused that by going to the reins too quickly to rate him.

The less good: he lost his mind at a pile of 3 railroad ties that may have been a foot high that I asked him to go over mid-course.  Like, it took me a minute to get him over that, and he could have stepped over it no problem.  My trainer said it was the location - next to one of the banks, in a little depression.

More from last summer, no pics were taken yesterday.

I tried hard to focus on staying quiet and relaxed like our last jump field lesson, but there's a fine line between enough leg to keep him committed and quiet and relaxed.  I'm still feeling it out.  Our only refusal, though, was at the logs and at the down bank (which we haven't done in nearly a year), and the only thing he crazy over jumped was when we put a stadium fence over the faux ditch.


Overall, though, I was happy.  Most jumps were quiet and brave and in a good rhythm.  Should get the keys to the new house today, so I'm not sure what this week will look like for the pony!

"HEY BLOGLAND!"

We have sort of an unwritten rule at our barn that no one goes to an event without having XC schooled in the week before: at least/especially at the lower levels.  With Jump Start being NEXT WEEKEND, that meant we were going XC schooling this weekend.  Enter Bea Hive Ranch:

#nofilter.  Does it get any better than this?

That house, oh my god, that house.  It overlooks about 70 acres of XC schooling and a pasture, and the house itself is stunning.

None of us had been there before, making it a perfect show prep venue, since the horses would be facing brand new obstacles in a new environment.  I have no pictures, so you'll just have to take my word for it.  These things happened:

- We survived our first ditch!  He jumped it the first time and my poor riding scared him, so the second time he was less inclined to go over.  By the end he was jumping it reliably, though.
- He never peeked or hesitated at anything I asked him to jump.  The only things that felt awkward were the bad strides.
- My Intec vest hit the back of my saddle and threw me forward after a 2'3 rolltop.  Time for a new/better fitting one?

Gorgeous day.

One thing I did notice is that schooling my new level's fences is intimidating because my brain hasn't really caught up to the fact that I'm beginner novice yet.  Much of the day went like this: "Jen, take the water complex, then circle back to that house."

Water complex

House

My brain: "That house looks huge!" My mouth: "Okay!"

I wasn't scared, just keenly aware of the height, until we actually jumped the first couple of BN height things and then my brain adjusted to the new height and I stopped thinking about it.

The best part of the day, though, was Connor stepping down off of a down bank like a normal horse instead of creeping to the edge, checking for lions and then leaping off it like a deer like normal.  I wish I had video.  He was like "Ho, hum, business as usual for this champion event pony," and I was like "Whose horse is this?!"  because he has never taken a down bank so casually, ever.  Not even once.

Not surprisingly, down banks aren't nearly as difficult to ride when your horse doesn't try to long jump off of them.  Who knew?

I wouldn't let Connor graze as we handwalked the horses back to the trailer after watering them, so he took a chunk out of this ornamental grass.  "So there!"

Finally, woman!

It's in the middle of nowhere, Indiana, and the middle of nowhere, Indiana is the most beautiful place in the world in September.

I think next weekend should be very successful, at least where XC is concerned.

Connor and I had semi-private XC coaching today on the property instead of full team practice.  The plan was to duplicate the clinic XC school exactly (minus the down bank bounce, because no way n\man!) so that we weren't giving Connor anything new to think about.

Except that he had apparently slept since then and launched the down bank the first time.  I mean, it didn't look like this:

Julie Pate and Catch Me If You Can at Chatt Hills last weekend, full photo series of his leap into the water here: "How NOT to Jump a Drop into Water".  She says “I love that horse so much! He has the heart of a lion with the brain of a marble! A shiny marble! With glitter in it.”"

But it was scary.  So I did it again.  And again.  And with the blessing of my coach, that's more or less all we did.  Up the bank, down the bank, up the bounce bank, tiny log, tiny log, down bank, down bank, down bank.  We both really, really needed it.

Halfway through, I said, "It's so hard to plan for, because he jumps it differently every time."  My trainer replied, "I feel your pain.  It just goes to show how much more exposure he needs to everything.  He needs to do this so many times that he's bored out of his mind and it becomes routine."  I know what she means.  Keeping him interested will never be an issue when he checks for lions every time he takes the down bank at a slightly different angle than the previous approach, Connor creates his own fun.

We also did so much galloping and it was awesome!  We always think Connor runs out of gas quickly in the arena, but he's been fooling us.  That horse has lungs!  Once we had done the bank a few times, multiple times in a row he landed bucking and/or bolting off the down bank just for fun, so my trainer said, "Don't pull him up if he does that, put him to work!"

So the next time it happened, I made him canter off around the (really) big field  And then he moved up to a gallop, and I just hung out up there in my XC seat, having flashbacks to galloping racehorses and just calmly waiting for him to wear out.  I assumed it would be quick, I was wrong!  He was ears up having the time of his life, flying over the hilly terrain like it was the coolest thing he'd ever done with his life.  Truly, truly enjoying himself.  I wasn't going to pull him up, either, I was having fun myself.  Getting run away with on a Welsh Cob, even an athletic one, is just fun, not scary.

When I finally got him pulled up my trainer said, "That wasn't very productive.  His cruising speed needs to be slower than that."  I was thinking "...but it was fun!" but I responded, "Okay."

But most importantly, neither of us were impressed by down banks by the end, and I was comfortable with the whole process of slipping my reins and keeping my upper body still and back while he checked for lions.  We even calmly trotted it once, and when that went well, she had us quit there.  We have a lot of work to do, but he's going to be worth all the time and effort we're putting in.  XC machine!

Promise I'm not milking the clinic videos for all they're worth by spreading them out.  My coworkers blew up our network on accident a couple of days ago, and the part I manage reacted especially poorly, so this week has been insane.  Very little time for blogging!

When asked by my trainer if there was anything specifically I wanted her to do with him on Day 2 on Sunday, I said "Down banks."  We did them once while schooling at the HHP, and it was terrifying.  Seeing the ground go out from underneath him, the dire warnings that I'd get bashed in the face if my weight was even remotely forward, and remember to let the reins slip and keep your leg in front of you...I was afraid for the first time since I got my jumping cojones back.  Total honesty: I cried I was so scared after our final attempt.  This was just last summer.  Clearly I am not the person to start a horse over down banks.

They started the day with walking over a log.  The clinician wanted her to give him time to puzzle things out at first, and not to rush him AT ALL.  "Dribble him over it," he said.  This is a compilation of his log attempts:



(You can see the throatlatch tension discussed earlier, especially in the last couple of log attempts.  His nose is in front of the vertical, but his throatlatch is tense.  It goes away later, with his nose in roughly the same position.)

After the clinician was satisfied there, they moved onto the single baby down bank, and then added a crossrail, again instructing her to let him dribble at first to give him time to think and process.  What I found most interesting was that his uncertainty about the down bank directly affected his approach and takeoff at the crossrail, even 15-20 feet away.  Check out how he attacks the approach on the final attempt, though - you can totally see his learning curve in this one - he's a brave badass by the last attempt, and even accelerates toward it to attack it.  Atta boy, Con!:

Due to scheduling issues, we ended up schooling at the Hoosier Horse Park today, a place Connor has been many times but he'd never gone XC there before.  There were highs and lows, but overall, I'm grateful for the opportunity to have gotten that out of the way before Saturday, and I'm excited about Connor's prospects as an eventing pony.

Things we learned:

Being silly on the trailer

1. He does better when he's cantering, because when he trots the fences he has a lot of time to think.
2. When he has time to think, he looks at all the stuff around the fence (rocks, trees, people) and not the fence itself.
3. Down banks are hard for both of us, and I gave him a bad ride to our first one, which scared both of us.  It sucks to have that been his first experience, but he did go down it, albeit hesitantly, every time.  My constant problem of being forward was magnified, so when I looked down at this baby bank and went "HOLY SHIT THAT'S HUGE!" Connor went "SHE'S AFRAID, THERE MUST BE A TIGER UNDER THERE!" and launched it and I fell forward, but not off!  But I was still pretty shook up and angry at myself for knowing that was going to happen, trying to fix it, and still failing.  Thankfully, we have banks at home that we can school.
4. Up banks are awesome.  He was uncertain the first time, but every time after that I really felt him lock on to it and go, "I got this, Mom!"  It was an awesome feeling.
5. He gets tough when we're cantering out there, but not in a bad way, in an "I know my job and like it way."  Ears up, cantering around happily.
6. Water was no problemo, as expected.
7. He really enjoyed himself, after an initial "moment" at pretty much every single fence.

The down bank experience and the crappy trot fences really shook me up, which is unfortunate, because he did really well and clearly enjoyed himself.  I'll be okay, but it's clouding my mind as I write this, otherwise I'd be a lot more enthusiastic.

At the end, my trainer could tell I was down on myself, so she told me to go canter ahead of the group as they walked back to the trailer, and to take the tiny ramp jump, canter through the water, then do a long canter back to the up bank, then the fences we started with. It was the first time I got to do a long canter and the first time I cantered all those fences, and finally, it clicked.  Without that moment, I would have focused on nothing but the bad down bank experience, but ending with him listening to me, and forward, and clearly enjoying himself, and the two of us seeing our distances and not the lions next to the fences, really made me feel better.  My trainer is such a genius, and so tactful.

All in all, looking forward to this weekend!