Cob Jockey

I have no media from my second National Drive lesson since Mary couldn't be there, but fortunately for you all I had a near duplicate of that lesson this week at home, so we're going to combine the two.

Home instructor looking over my work. All photos courtesy of Leah.

There's a driver's meeting every morning at 8:30am, so when I saw an 8am slot open on Joanna's schedule, I grabbed it. I guessed that there'd be no other horses out to distract Disco during the meeting, and, having already had a "working through getting his focus" lesson, I really wanted a different kind of productivity for the second.

I was right, and Disco was SO good. We had his focus from the very beginning, and Joanna was able to cover so much ground with me.

We spent more than half the lesson at the trot on the driving equivalent of a 20m circle, which was the first time I had really trotted him for a continuous amount of time in the cart. 

She was also able to drop some wisdom about how my cart fits me (as good as anything off the rack will, but I need some seat adjustments), how to use the whip (never for going forward if you can help it, only for bending, and never on the horse's back) and inside rein vs outside rein in turning (juuuuuuust like in Dressage).

It just worked out that my home trainer was also able to give me a lesson a couple weeks after The Drive. Last time she saw me before Christmas, I was in the wooden cart, my lessons were mostly at the walk, and I still felt overwhelmed by driving.

This time? 

We leveled up the work significantly and ended up doing trot serpentines! 

For whatever reason these videos' frame rates aren't playing nice with the GIF editor, but just imagine it at normal speed.

Things feel like they come up very fast in the cart and the indoor, so the trot serpentines felt like they were a lot to manage at first. Just like in riding, you can't just yank them from one turn to the next, you have to have clear aids and at least a couple of straight strides in the middle before you change the bend.

We also worked on pace and obedience. He's getting a LOT less sticky about up transitions than when this instructor last saw us, but of course now she wants more. 

We did a lot of transitions - a LOT of transitions - including starting to ask for transitions within the gaits. For the first time, I pushed him for a very big trot, and started to feel a glimmer of that big swing I've started to feel under saddle. With him, his default is this low-energy mincing pony trot, but you know there's more in there when you see it.

She pointed out, as did Joanna, that he's educated enough in the contact to start learning that the reins are for more than turning and stopping. I would ask for a half halt, for example, or for him to soften to the bit, and he would stop. 

This is something I need to start working on under saddle too, but I've been erring on the side of caution given my complicated relationship with contact over the years.

For the first time ever, I felt totally comfortable driving, even at speed. I enjoyed the heck out of that lesson, and was smiling most of the time. It's such a hard challenge to be a complete beginner at something that feels so foreign, but I feel like I'm getting there with it. 

This lesson was a great roadmap for the next few months and gave me lots of things to work on, although I hope to have her back out sooner than that!

I was - in a word - nervous about driving Disco at The National Drive.

I mean, I'm nervous about driving in general still, and I had never driven him outside of our indoor arena. Nevermind that Maude trail drove him all over the place and also showed him in driving off the property. 

I decided I was only going to drive with an instructor present, and I also decided that I would make my mandatory safety check part of my first lesson.

The pro photographer didn't get any pictures of my drives, but did get this one of us. Fun fact, he had not been groomed in days here, that glow is just his coat. Photo by Mark Jump Photography

No matter if you've been to the Drive zero times or fifty times, the first time you take your horse and cart out, you have to drive over to the mandatory safety check and be inspected. Driving people take safety verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry seriously. 

At the safety check, they make sure you can control your horse in public and that there's nothing unsafe about your setup - they look for straps that look like they might be about to break, cart in need of repair, harness put on incorrectly, that kind of thing. Once you pass, they put a green band on your cart to show that you've passed the safety check, and it stays on your cart the rest of the weekend.

Driving over to safety check with my emotional support instructor. Thanks to Mary for all the rest of the photos and video!

After I passed my safety check, my instructor gave me the choice: indoor arena, or outdoor arena? We drive in the indoor all the time at home, so outdoor sounded scarier, which is why I chose it.

Disco didn't let me down. There was a lot to see and do and feel as we walked across the complex to the outdoor, and my #slugmode pony was distracted, up and forward. By the time we got to the arena, I was struggling to keep him at a walk, which had my nerves maxed out: I was braced hard against the floorboard and pulling hard against him, trying to keep him under control. I'd honestly never gotten a chance to work with him in a mindset like that before, since he's always so chill at home.

This is pretty much what we looked like for 30 straight minutes

For the next half hour, Joanna did a masterful job of talking me through it, alternating between giving me tips and telling funny stories through the headset, I knew, just to distract me from my nerves. All the while Disco was screaming, counterbending and trying to trot.

"This is just baby stallion stuff," she said. "This is a big atmosphere for him, lots to see. He's trying to call to the other horses, there's no sense in disciplining him for any of it, we just need to be patient and give him reasons to focus on us." I mean, to be entirely fair and 100% accurate, he was still not even four years old during this adventure!

Disco got introduced to Mary's show grooming intensity

After what felt like an eternity, I finally felt him come down enough that we could move on in the lesson. We worked on basic steering, with four sets of cones set out on a circle, which I am not at all ashamed to say I ran over multiple times. 

"So right now, he's kind of doing whatever he wants generally in the direction you want him to go, but you're not really steering him. We're going to work on that."

It was here that I got my biggest lesson of Day 1. She told me to turn my shoulders in the direction I wanted to go.

No joke, the tightest turn I have ever made driving so far.

It was revolutionary. He started going exactly where I wanted him to, and we stopped mauling cones. I realized a couple of things: one, that there are a lot of things that my brain goes "If you're not on his back he can't feel this so it doesn't matter," that I'm probably going to keep discovering like this, and two, uhhhhhhhhhhh pretty sure my turning aids in the saddle are also dysfunctional (more on that later).

Brain cell, reinstalled

That was supposed to be my one and only lesson of the drive, but as we walked back to the barn, I knew I couldn't end on that one, not when we had only just started to make real progress in both my nerves and actually learning something right at the end. So I quickly did some mental math on how to cram one more lesson in before I had to leave for my Rolex Land Rover Cosequin Kentucky 5* tailgate prep, and got up bright and early the next day...

The cart isn't adjusted well here yet, but would you look at that COLOR!

It's a really intimidating sport. There's a lot to remember, a lot that I don't know yet, and a lot that can go wrong if things go wrong. That, and just not feeling confident in the first cart, has kept me from driving (at least, with a cart behind him) since my last lesson. But that changed this week.

Photos mostly by Leah

With Leah's help, I got the Frey hitched to him for the first time, and started making the adjustments needed to balance it to him, both to the cart and to the harness.

The adjustment that helped the most was raising the tugs (the heavy leather loops the shafts sit in). In the top photo on this post, we hadn't yet raised them at all. In the photo below, on Sunday night, I had raised them one hole.

And in this photo from Monday night, I had raised them two, which is where I'm going to keep them unless a professional tells me otherwise.

We feel a lot more confident trotting with this cart than the other one!

The Frey shafts are adjustable in length and also adjustable in width (at the horse end only). When I first hitched him up to it, they were way too wide. I rotated them in some, but the tugs were still being pulled away from the horse as shown below:

This also puts extra pressure on the saddle and on Disco's back. Fun fact: the saddle of this harness IS treed even though it's only like four inches wide, so it does distribute pressure better than some types of harness saddles meant for other purposes. But you still don't want a lot of pressure on it anyway.

So the next night, I rotated the shafts basically all the way in. It's not an adjustment you can make quickly or easily with the horse standing there, so I just took a flyer on how much I needed to adjust them.

This was a lot closer to ideal, with the tugs hanging nicely down from the harness. I'm going to rotate them back out just slightly before our next drive to give his body a little more room between them, but I'm happy with it.

And in a year or two he'll do the Welsh Cob thing and grow OUT all of a sudden, and I'll have to rotate them back out, ha. Video from Tricia, my passenger. I absolutely cannot film and drive!

Finally - I'm working on becoming more independent with driving. It's a huge rule in driving that you never have an animal attached to a cart without someone holding their head, and you never break that rule in public, but pretty much every driver I know breaks that rule at home and just installs a good "WHOA, DAMMIT," because they never have a second person around to hold them while hitching up.

Silicone winter over ants are pretty ideal for sticking to the Frey seat. I think I'm going to be driving in full seats year-round.

Last night, I brought out his purple "work halter" (the halter and lead rope that we only use for ground work), put it over his driving bridle and went through our usual ground tying cue while I hitched and unhitched, with Leah a safe few feet away to grab him if he moved.

I needn't have worried. He didn't move a single foot.

Could not be less interested in moving right now, thanks.

Tricia said, "Are you SURE you have his birthday right? Are you sure he's the age you think he is?" It really is incredible - he's still 3! Just a few weeks away from being four. He's just that good.

All of that has given me the confidence to send in my entry for The National Drive here in a few weeks, but that's a topic for another post.

I am so new to driving, I don't know what I don't know yet. Which is why it took me a while to admit that the black cart wasn't right for me.

There's a lot about it that IS right for me, and in a world where I had the time and money to fix it up and the right vehicle to transport it more easily AND the space to store multiple carts, I would 100% keep it. 

But it needs more work than I could possibly have assessed until I got it home and hitched it up, it's not suitable for some of the classes I'd like to do, and honestly, it doesn't make me feel confident while driving, which is making me not want to drive - which, in a sport that already feels like it has a lot of mental barriers to me, I really don't need!

Fortunately I paid very little for it and should be able to sell it for the same.

But I'm an avoidant that will power through pretty much anything without thinking about it (hi, working on it), so it's not like I actually thought about all that until I saw a nearly new Frey Sprint cart for sale on Facebook Marketplace an hour from me for about half of the new price, and the exact amount I just sold Connor's Dressage saddle for...

Stopping me in my tracks while scrolling Facebook Marketplace. Well, hello.

The Frey ticks a lot of boxes - it's going to be suitable for anything I want to do in driving for many years to come (including CDEs until I get to a level that requires a four-wheeled cart), it's far easier to transport, and it's light and sturdy. 

The shafts come off (really the whole thing comes apart) and my goodness did I feel safer hauling this than the wood cart. It doesn't stick out at all past my micro truck bed with the shafts removed.

The only thing it won't do is win any "fancy turnout classes" - I can still do them, but I probably won't win. That said, I'd rather bomb around a cones course or a marathon course than win a turnout class anyway, and the wood cart is not suitable for either.

Hilariously, a few hours after I agreed to buy the cart with Disco's jump saddle money, Disco told me he wants to jump, but that's okay. Jump saddles are easier to find.

I got it home on Sunday, and I'm SO in love with it. My SO couldn't stop raving about it either - how much easier to move it was, how much sturdier it felt. The fact that we can swap out the wheels for snow sled runners.

The most handsome horse 💕

The seller also had carriage lamps for it that she threw in for an extra couple hundred dollars. I really shouldn't have, but that's not something I could say no to - they were $500 new and fit the cart perfectly. They are actual oil lamps, like, with flames and wicks, which blew my mind. They will also, along with the wood dash, class it up just a bit more when I'm in a "fancy turnout" class.

They also have red glass on the back - tail lights!

It's easier to get into, and fits me so much better - I can actually brace against the footboard properly (the wood cart doesn't even have a diagonal footboard) which even just resting on stands, felt so much more secure than sitting perched on the wood cart with my feet dangling.

And, on that note, the whole thing is adjustable in so many places. Seat height, shocks, shaft length, shaft width, cart length. I'm sure there are more I'm forgetting. We'll be able to get this perfectly balanced to Disco, although I'm sure it's going to take some fiddling at first.

Bolts, bolts everywhere.

So, all in all, I couldn't be happier with this purchase or the decision to delay getting Disco a jump saddle. It already feels worth every penny to feel EXCITED to drive again, rather than slightly intimidated and uncomfortable.

I already can't wait for my next lesson.

As with many of the good horse things in my life, it was through Lisa that I finally met a driving instructor. Lisa's been telling me about her for years, but our paths have never been closer at the moment, since she's about to take Eva on a trial to see if she wants to be a driving pony. I'm tickled that Eva brought both Disco's saddle and a driving instructor into my life.

She lives about a half hour north of me, and while her passion is combined driving, she's led a life full of interesting driving experiences as both a professional and an amateur. Think things like being the trainer for a person that had coaches with footmen, lamps, and full picnic hampers in the back for shows.

She showed up, and when Leah and Deb asked if they could audit, the instructor said "As many people as I can get hooked on driving, so much the better."

The first lesson (which ended up lasting 3 hours!) was a lot of equipment stuff. She inspected my cart (perfect size for him, serviceable but does need some work - no surprises), my harness (needs a different noseband and slightly longer traces, but serviceable), and my bit (weirdly the right size, but too narrow at the very top because Disco's face widens so quickly from a tiny little muzzle). 

I was relieved that Maude had steered me correctly in my gear choices so far, even if it's not perfect. Just like riding, I'll start with something that works and upgrade over time, I'm sure.

Ummm pop quiz. Components seen in this photo: breast collar, traces, tugs, saddle, girth, overgirth, shafts.

There is. SO MUCH. To remember. Thank goodness I had a professional there. Just getting the harness on and adjusted was an adventure. And she's a stickler, in the best of ways - multiple straps got a hole punched, not because they were too long or short, but because a half hole would make the fit perfect.

Just me, taking pictures of things to remember how they go

Even these little straps broke my brain. You have to like, remember the right direction to wrap these and put them through a little metal bracket on the underside of the shafts, and decide if they need to be wrapped once or twice, which is affected by how straight the horse is standing in the shafts when you hitch up.

Disco was as good as you could expect a 3 year old stud colt to be for all of this. A little bored, a little nibbly, but stood in the crossties for the better part of a half hour for all of this fiddling with the harness without any major complaints.

We started with ground driving.

And after a few laps of that, we hooked him up. The instructor said she would normally not go that quickly, but she took me at Maude's word that he was solid.

My first ever "behind the ears" of Disco!

She took the reins for a couple of laps before we switched seats (driver sits on the right!) and she handed them to me. But she kept the whip, which, thank goodness. I had a hard enough time just managing the reins, which she mercifully allowed me to hold like riding reins just to spare my brain the challenge of being without muscle memory in addition to everything else I was trying to learn.

I have to admit, I don't know a damn thing about carts, but the proportion of cart to horse, as well as the balance of the shafts, looks nice.

It was the strangest sensation, to be holding reins, feeling a mouth, but sitting in a seat. I found myself more than once with my heels pressed into the back of the cart, hamstrings active, legs desperate to be doing something since my hands were holding reins.

She rides too, and she was able to translate everything into ridden Dressage for me. The outside rein still dictates the size of your circles, just like in riding. Correct contact is just the same in driving as in riding, not too much or too little. Half halts were even similar, with a "square" (both reins) half halt for preparation and general rebalancing, and a right or left half halt to control the shoulders.

Changing rein through the middle of the ring, with a halt.

Disco was just wonderful. Not perfect - there were times he didn't want to stand still or would take a step back in a halt, but the instructor was quick to growl at him and use her whip, and every time he took correction well. He is, after all, only three - and the instructor said afterward that he's "well ahead of where he should be for his age." 

I have so much more respect for the drivers I've seen navigate cones courses at speed after this. Steering is HARD, yo!

When we were all done, she helped me learn how to put everything away correctly, including a precise way to fold the reins so that they didn't develop twists over time. "I'm sorry if what I'm telling you feels very picky, these are just the things I've learned over the years," she said. I told her not to apologize for that, that those are the kinds of experiential things you can't learn from a book, that you can only learn from someone who learned them from someone who held them to a high standard, like she did.

I am literally going to have to study and practice this. #slowlearner

Thankfully, she offered to come back for a lesson later this week. I'm looking forward to it already. Who knew I would enjoy driving after being afraid of it for all these years?

I had been stalking Facebook Marketplace for about a year, and knew a good deal when I saw one...

(It's amazing how many of my stories start out like this)

And that's how I ended up driving 700 miles round trip to pick up...

(Also this)

Yes, it's true. I, terrified of driving, just bought a cart. I am still as surprised as you all are. But after 18 months of talking to Maude about driving, realizing how much Disco enjoys it, seeing how reliable he is, and acknowledging how ridiculous it is to own two ponies broke to drive and not be able to drive them, I gave in.

In the seller's garage. I need to get some glamour shots of it soon.

Driving is OVERWHELMING, y'all. There is so much to learn and so many ways to do it wrong or to buy the wrong things. Maude graciously looked over each used listing I sent her and gave her opinion - not the right size for Disco, you can't show with bicycle wheels, etc etc. But this one checked out.

And and!! I managed to go pick it up on blogger Teresa's birthday, which is the day before my birthday, so we had a birthday brunch on my way up, which was awesome!

I don't know much about the cart. I think this style is called a gig cart. The paint needs some attention, but the crushed velvet seat is in amazing shape. My biggest concern was getting it home - I waffled for a long time on bringing a trailer or just my truck, because the dimensions were super tight. And they were - it barely fit. But it did fit.

This does mean I can transport both cart and pony to a show, as long as the weather is good.

I was very grateful to whoever ordered this truck new for spec'ing like a million tie down points in the bed. It didn't move a millimeter the entire way home. And it also didn't scratch the cab, thanks to some electrical pipe insulation and a blanket.

Next up, I need a harness, and conveniently, The National Drive is being held 30 minutes from me this week, and they have a tack swap...

My who knows how old cart next to my 1917 (yes, really) manure spreader