Cob Jockey

On Sunday, Mary finally made it down to visit Disco at home! She hadn't seen him in person since her trip to Lisa's in May.

Part of the reason she wanted to come down is she couldn't wait a moment longer to give me my Christmas present, which is a backpack cooler with a tap on it, hahaha. Going to be rolling in style for horse shows next year!

Not that my barnmates aren't willing to help me with him, but nobody gets me and my intentions for Disco the way Mary does! It was great to have her there as a second set of hands, and also to sponge up her baby training knowledge.

Disco: "Who is this lady and what is she doing?"

See in college, Mary and I both took a class in halter breaking baby horses for outside clients, only our year they tried to give us all Mustangs from Ewing...but Ewing had a Strangles outbreak right before we were supposed to get our weanlings. Mary ended up with a sweet little QH foal for an outside client, and I ended up with a 3 year old Mustang straight off the range.

Mary ended up getting her baby, Elmo, not only halter broken but also wearing a Thoroughbred exercise saddle, trailer loading, jumping into the feed cart on command, and ground driving literally all over campus by the time he was not quite a year old. Meanwhile, I ended up able to do almost nothing with my Mustang, who was later deemed not adoptable by Ewing.

So while we both got the classroom education, she is much more experienced with getting baby horses to be solid citizens than I am, so I appreciate all the help she gives me!

We started out in the indoor, where she wanted to introduce the lunge whip and introduce him to the idea of a human having control of and moving his body even when he wasn't on a line. She wanted him to start to understand the correlation between the whip position and being asked to walk, trot and whoa. He was...not fussed about it, lol.

 

We also walked him over raised poles for the first time and worked on trotting in hand with a whip behind him (not that he needs the encouragement, but to get him used to it for future lunging) and he did great with both.

With his baby patience for arena games waning, we put him back into his stall for some grooming time. Mary decided to tackle his mane, which to this point I've suffered from inertia on learning how to deal with. It is THICK and textured and OMG what am I going to do with this, lol.

Ahhhhhhhhh

I'm starting to have mixed feelings on mane pulling (story for another day) so she used a new thinning and shortening comb I just got while I stood next to him (he was fake tied to the wall) and distracted him. 

 

It turned out really good! I'll probably try the same comb on Connor this winter and will see how I feel about braiding that in the spring, which was always my biggest complaint with the Solocomb I used to have.

He really looks like a lot more of an adult with his shortened mane. At least, you can see glimmers of the adult he'll be someday here and there.

I love having my best wingman so close!

We're in the last two weeks of Connor's four months of full training, so I'm going to Cincinnati a lot the next two weeks to soak up all I can before CGP leaves for a relatively short Florida trip and I'm left here alone in the cold with my "new" pony.

Who is THE CUTEST not that I'm biased <3

 

No, your eyes don't deceive you: that's jump tack at a Dressage barn. CGP rents out one of her barns to a well-known Ohio eventing trainer, and every Saturday at 1pm there's a group of Dressage ladies that take a "jump" lesson from her, including CGP herself. I finally made it to one last Saturday. I say "jump, because it was a ground pole lesson, with four of them raised 6" on one side by the end. Not jumping oxers here, people!

Most of the time we started with the four trot poles, until the end when we rode it from the opposite direction.

The poles stayed the same throughout, but we gradually increased the complexity of the pattern we rode through them, so this would be a great exercise for someone riding alone at home. We rode the entire thing at the trot, and it demanded precision in the figures and good turning skills - so exactly what I got drilled on by CGP the previous weekend.

Even through this horrible photo (sorry buddy) you can see how much muscle he's packed on.

We never visibly struggled with it, partially because even the tight turns are easy on a pony, but the event trainer perceptively said, "His evasions aren't super obvious to someone standing on the ground, but I'm sure they are in the saddle. He likes to put his head down and rush, so it's not as obvious as [other rider's Saddlebred that wants to become a giraffe] even though both make the exercise harder. Make him slow his feet down and take bigger, loftier steps."

Review coming soon - I am kind of in live with there Majyk Equipe sparkle pads

Something in my brain clicked in midair and I let go with my hands, sat up, and suddenly found myself with a slower, more rideable pony. So for the zillionth time, DON'T F****** PULL ON THE REINS!

I hope I can join this lesson more in the future!

I have not been super great about doing Cavaletti Sundays, but I did it this week!  I pulled out Jimmy Wofford's "Gymnastics: Systematic Training for Jumping Horses" and did Exercise 1, which is a trot pole exercise.

Yes it involves 16 poles and PRECISE measuring (says Jimmy) and it took forevvvvvvvvvver to set up...which is why we do cavaletti on Sundays ha

The poles are set up in the arena the way they are laid out on the page.  "A" is set to working trot length, "B" is variable, "C" is extended trot and "D" is collected trot.  Jimmy has you go back and forth over A, then over the working trot distance in B, then spiral in and out over B, then do C, then do D, and finally you string them together.

On Sundays we wear white (just kidding, I just wanted to play with liners)

Jimmy advocates getting the horse to the poles and then letting them figure out the exercises without micromanaging, but he's developing an eventer and I'm developing a Dressage horse, so for the most part I focused consciously on asking for what was in front of us - the way I saw it, the poles would help reinforce my not-so-expert aids for each gait.

Connor really enjoyed himself and quickly figured out what was going on.  He had the easiest time with the collected poles, followed by the extended poles and the "B" poles.  The working poles he had the hardest time with, but, I mean, the point of the exercise isn't to do it all perfectly, and he did get better as we went along.






This exercise rode so well, I'd love to say I'll work through the rest of the Wofford book, but it's unfortunately very reliant on mid-ride jump height changes and I'm usually riding alone, so we'll see.

Let me start out with a still from last night's lesson that gives me ALL THE HEART EYES.  My horse has never looked like this in a canter still before!



For my lesson on Tuesday, I told my trainer I would like to use poles to help adjust the canter.  She came out firing with two exercises.

SO CUTE

That is NOT an average but a point-in-time snapshot of canter front end elevation, BUT 15.4cm is the highest front end elevation he's ever registered at the canter, by about 1 cm.

On Sunday after the show, Mary and I headed out to the barn on her way back to Chicago so she could pop Connor over some fences.


Now I know I said we weren't jumping until he told us we were ready, but a couple of things made me comfortable with jumping him on Sunday:

- It's Mary.  She's an incredible rider, especially over fences, and has one of the best analytical minds when it comes to horses that I've ever seen.  I have heard so many trainers say "I'd put her on anything in my barn!" so many times.  If any funny business was going on, not only would she identify it, she would quit right then if she felt it necessary.

- He was tired after the show - and we've recently started to theorize that his shenanigans are related to having too much energy, both due to the type of hay he got switched to last winter, and his turnout situation (paddock instead of pasture).  More on this later.

- I put him in his loose ring.  I knew she wouldn't need more, and I'm beginning to suspect the elevator is too much right now in general.

Dat Samshield tho.  She made a deal with a Samshield rep while she was still a CWD rep, otherwise she wouldn't have it.  It's freakin gorgeous.

She started out with trot poles, and after the second time through, she pulled him up.  "Did you see that??" she asked.  "Yeah," I said, "He slowed down, lowered his nose, then lifted his back, engaged his hocks and went through with impulsion."

"Yeah," she said, "But I think his problem is that he's just so worried about making it over.  He's so careful - I mean, he never gets hurt even in turnout, right?  That's just the default way he handles himself - careful.  And he's so people-oriented, just look at how he loved being messed with at the show yesterday, he really cares about what's going to happen to both you and him on the other side.  We have to teach him that it's always going to be okay."

She moved on to canter poles both directions, and he struggled more to the right than left.  When he was doing that reliably, it was poles between standards, then finally, a crossrail.


Well, that was anticlimactic.

Even after we raised the two fences into baby verticals, he stayed that quiet, jumped out of a rhythm, and generally looked bored out of his mind - which is AWESOME!

She worked on helping him keep his chest elevated, theorizing that he's so comfortable now in a Dressagey canter (which she finally got to feel, and called it 'installed'!), but he's not comfortable in a good canter to jump out of, with his throatlatch open and head up.  He needs to learn to engage his hindquarters just as well in both types of canters.

Here are some more clips, for the ADD folks in the crowd, they are no more than 10 seconds each.




Mary had fun and Connor was good over fences.  So many wins!

Fun fact: on St. Patrick's Day last year in Indianapolis, the high was 77.  Today's high was 37.  Winter 2013 is officially "The Winter that Will Not Die".

Connor was curious when I cleaned the overflow stalls in the run-in shed in his paddock today, but this is as close as the little chicken got!

Aaaahh-dorable.

37 is still not bad riding weather if you've got an indoor, though, and I had two good ones this weekend.  I noticed that I'm not riding the outside shoulder as well as I used to, which is causing him to lose the connection often, especially around corners, so I slowed things down to the walk for most of today and re-established granular control of his individual body parts.  Once I had it at the walk, then we moved to the trot, etc, and the connection was much better.

Yesterday someone left three poles in a "circle of death minus one" configuration in the indoor, so I did that with him at the trot and canter while on my bareback pad.  I don't know if it was the lack of saddle or what, but I had a terrible time seeing distances and got launched all over the place - my fault.  But the nice thing about working jumps or poles by myself is that I can just keep trying different things until I figure it out, and that is exactly what we did.  Good pony.

Poor missing mane.

My instructor recently implemented a new policy for Intermediate level riders and above that lessons will now be 45 minutes long, but that we are expected to be in the ring 15 minutes before our lesson warming up.  I really like that. She's worked extensively with all of us on what our horses need in a warmup, and I'm finding that we get more done when we can jump right in to the lesson rather than her watching the 15 minutes it takes for Connor and I to get on the same page.

No offense, western pleasure guys.

Okay, she did not say we looked like Charlotte and Valegro, but it felt like this.  In my head.

We're back!  With lots of photos.

How do you like our $29 clearance sheet?

With my heavy travel schedule and Thanksgiving the last two weeks, Connor has gotten some time off, with just a bareback ride a week ago, and a real ride today, and no lessons.  I wasn't sure if we were at a place where a vacation would help, hurt, or be neutral after our muscle building late last summer and then our big breakthrough and subsequent good rides over the past month.

About the time I finished with stalls today and went to pull Connor out of his field, the redneck neighbors that live immediately behind the facility (This is the Midwestern US, after all, we ALL have redneck neighbors.) were having target practice with their rifles and shotguns, and the horses were terrified.   As someone married to a weekly league target competition shooter at the local gun club, I would describe it as irresponsibly loud and constant target practice given how hard the horses were panicking (the shooting was taking place 20 feet beyond our fence line).  It continued even after I grabbed Connor and started riding in the indoor, and he was tense, up, and spooking at things he doesn't normally spook at, trying to decide whether the noise could be coming from the pile of jump standards in the middle of the ring:

He gave these the evil eye the entire lesson, every time there was a shot.

Or the poles and flowers in the corner:

Terrifying, I know.

Since we most often show at the Hoosier Horse Park, which is next door to Camp Atterbury, this does also fall under the "I wouldn't scratch for this at a show, therefore I will train in it" rule.  Try riding your Dressage test when they're practicing with the heavy artillery and Blackhawk helicopters are flying low enough for you to wave at the army guys hanging out of it!  I decided to work him at the walk only to allow his brain to process everything until I got him soft, round and listening at the walk, and that my litmus test for his submission would be a quiet halt off of my seat, like we normally get.

It took quite a while, but I got it, and only after I got it did I ask for the trot.  To my amazement, he never missed a beat from where we were before the break, and may have been even better, though he's always better when he's nervous.  Does the lovely, forward 'suspension bridge' hind-end drive trot ever get old?  People with mature/"finished" horses, does their ability to not only retain what you've taught them but also learn new things ever get old?  Connor's green enough that consistency and retention from week to week is still amazing to me, especially so after a break.

Once I had him soft, supple and listening, I trotted him through this exercise someone had left out in the indoor:

All photos taken while on horseback, I apologize for the blur.  Standing is not one of Connor's strong qualities.

And after he went through it several times without hitting it (didn't hit it once, actually!) and with the same long but connected trot my trainer asked us for in our last lesson, I cooled him out and called it a day.  At 63 degrees on the second day of December, it was way too hot to ask anyone that isn't sporting a full clip to go too hard.  Just the walking and trotting that we did left Connor sweatier than he's been all winter.  How ARE you supposed to manage clipped horses when the weather has 40 degree temperature swings for two straight weeks?

It's good to be back!

Two unusual things happened at my lesson on Thursday:
- I rode in a CC saddle in a lesson for the first time since January.
- I got the leg yield to the right!

It's been a couple of days since the lesson, so the minute details are lost, but the big picture of the lesson was something like this:
- I warmed Dillan up under saddle, including cantering.  This is the most real cantering I've been allowed to do since starting there.  Lately I've been doing lots of transitions with no more than a full 20m circle of canter.  She really took my canter back to square one and it's paying off: I'm sitting up through the transition, more effectively using my legs, I have a quieter seat and hands, and I'm more relaxed.  She had me warm him up in a half-seat, and it felt so good to just let loose at the canter for a few minutes.

- I put my stirrups where I thought they should be, warmed up, then she told me she wanted them shorter.  When she shortened them, I seriously felt like I was back up on the racehorses, and I thought to myself "There is no way that this is the correct length!" But I trust her, so I stayed quiet, and sure enough, when we got going over the poles, I realized that it was just my brain switching from serious Dressage riding to serious fences riding for the first time in my life that made them seem so short.

- I felt different in the CC saddle than I did before, and I know it's because my position has been totally changed in the last three months.  She said Thursday that when she saw me ride in a CC that first week, it was like I was locked into the saddle and my body just "clicked into place" into the position I thought I was supposed to take.  Now, she says, I'm more relaxed through all of my joints and my position is natural rather than forced.

- We did lines of poles, and it felt so good!  I felt relaxed, my hands were following him, my position was solid, and I was able to see the lines and adjust him - even when she thought I was going to fail miserably at getting a certain striding, I only barely failed - that's progress, right?  It felt wonderful, and gave me confidence for actually being able to jump at the clinic and C/T next month.

- And finally, we had multiple amazing leg yields on the right rein.  Last week's breakthrough was on the left rein, but this week's was on his hard side.  I wasn't doing too well at it until she told me to get him straight on the quarter line, almost halt him, and ask him to move just his right hind over.  Just one foot.  Well, breaking it down and bringing it back to the basics like that was just what I needed to figure out how to coordinate my body and tell him what I wanted, because we got it!  More than once!  It's nice to have a breakthrough like that.

One month until the clinic...I hope I'm ready.