Cob Jockey

In the middle of a terrible practice ride on the show grounds, an hour after my husband texted me to tell my my dog had ripped my new eBay'ed Tredsteps to shreds, it started to pour down rain.  Sitting there in a borrowed saddle, in the pouring rain, feeling like shit and knowing I couldn't quit with Connor acting like a meathead was a very pity-party moment.

I'm keeping it all in perspective.  This is what you sign up for, with a green horse.  The night before we had the greatest flat/jump round of our life together, and not even 24 hours later, I couldn't get him to turn left or soften or put his head down in the warmup ring with our horses and a few others going around.  He was calling to the other horses and acting completely green, which was so disappointing to me after how focused he was during the GDHT warmup.  But things could always be worse than being green and unfocused.

Fence 6, the bogey fence for us.  We've never jumped hay before.

Looks tiny to me now.  It would not have felt that way a few weeks ago.

It got better, but only after about a half-hour of just ugly riding.  Then, right when it was getting better, it started pouring, raining so hard the raindrops hitting my skin hurt, and all the horses left.  I was in the middle of running through my Dressage test, so I kept going, and Connor turned into an animal again, spooking at the rain on the roof of the judge's box and screaming his head off.  I quit on a good note, when I finally found one, and walked back, soaked.

The good news is that stadium (18"ish) looks tiny to me, and there are no flowers.  We're finally schooling higher than we're showing (2'3" and maybe 2'6" here and there).  Here's hoping he got that out of his system and tomorrow is better.

I learned such a huge lesson today about training.

After the show, we switched from "Dressage for the sake of Dressage" to "Dressage for the sake of jumping".  There is an expectation that we maintain the same quality of flatwork that we've finally consistently attained, but he's just felt flat the past couple of weeks, with none of the sparkle, lightness or rocking back on his hocks we had a few weeks ago.  It's apparent in this video Austen took of us at my lesson on Thursday:



The goal of that lesson was keeping the hind legs active while "slowing down" the front legs; in effect, the beginnings of collection.  We both have to learn to slow the rhythm down and take a controlled canter to the base of a fence instead of our usual strung-out-behind canter.  I am also working on sitting up.  These were our best attempts over the jump exercise, complete with many transitions since I have been instructed not to let him give me less-than-his-best transitions into any gait:


Still not great, right?  I worked on the flatwork part yesterday in my Dressage saddle and today tried the jump exercise, but got more of the same lackluster effort.  Something didn't feel right, I was frustrated and we were on the verge of a fight, so I stopped.  I don't fight with my rides.  If I feel the need to fight, either I'm not asking clearly enough, he's not ready for what I'm asking, or I'm missing a step on the training scale.

I brought it back to the walk and analyzed the situation.  I realized that he was popping his shoulder to the outside rather belligerently, not carrying himself, not bending through the ribcage, and generally doing the minimal amount of work necessary - and I was allowing it.  It was a near-identical repeat of January, when my trainer told me that sometimes I was going to have to get tough with him in order to make progress.

So, I repeated the square exercise from January (turns on the forehand at the corners and shoulder-in on the sides), and then once I had his shoulder and neck I did the little circles exercise from April to get him bending.  At first there was much unhappy head-flinging at being asked to work properly/the hard way, and I wasn't unfair to him, but I was unyielding in my demand that he give me his body the way I know he can.  When he did, I once again asked for the baby collected trot and collected canter in the same way I had asked previously, and got a DRAMATICALLY better response - better than we ever got in my lesson on Thursday.

I learned such a big lesson today from all that.  Training him is like building a stack of blocks.  Sometimes I go to put another block on the top of the stack, but I don't notice that one of the supporting blocks is gone from underneath.  I can't just take for granted the fact that the blocks are all there, I have to actively check for them, because without them, we're mediocre, and if I try to go forward without all of them, we'll have another backslide like we did last summer when I wasn't allowed to ride for six weeks.

Building blocks.

Whether you closely followed the story or not, it was hard to miss the buzz surrounding the on-course death of Andrea Leatherman's 7 year old Thorougbred mare, Neveah.  The pair had a rotational fall on a tabled oxer after Neveah hung her front legs while going Intermediate in Florida earlier this month.  While the necropsy eventually found that the mare died of a heart attack and not the fall, there was plenty of time for armchair enthusiasts to speculate in the meantime, and one of the thoughts discussed on the CoTH forums, that of a pro vs. ammie rider for bringing up a young horse, caught my eye on a personal level.

Essentially, the poster said that sometimes young horses that are brought up by professionals are not given a bad ride to a fence often enough to figure out what to do when things go wrong, and never have a chance to develop that "5th leg" it's said horses possess when they figure out how to save themselves at an XC fence.  If a horse always gets a good ride to a fence at home, and then something happens at the show and the rider gets distracted or gets a bad spot, they won't have a frame of reference for that.

You guys know that I am barely qualified to be bringing up a green horse, and there but for the grace of a really good and patient trainer go Connor and I.  Even to those ground poles last week I was getting some bad distances - jumping is not something I have done a lot of - and I felt bad.  But reading that put it in a different perspective for me: I'm still aiming for a perfect ride to every fence, but if I don't get it, I'm not going to get down on myself for being a bad green horse rider.  I'm not a pro, I need to train him to save my ass when I mess up just as much as I need to train him to be a rock star over fences.  He has to be able to assess the situation and do what he needs to do to keep us safe, first, and hopefully make it to the other side of the fence, second.  It's so important when riding fixed obstacles at speed on cross-country that he possesses that confidence and independence.  I make sure to keep jumping safe, fun and never over-face him, and if I occasionally get the bad spot, that's a learning moment too.

So many times since owning Connor I've had this complete rewiring of things I held to be true before I owned a green bean, like when Solo & Encore's mom posted about green horse contact last year and blew my mind.  I love having what I currently hold to be true challenged and changed, it makes me a better person and a better horseperson.  What training philosophies have you changed your mind on through the years?

Octoberfest 2011

April 2012, most recent under-saddle photos I have of him!