Cob Jockey

"Jesus take the wheeeeeeeeeellllllllll," I yelled as Connor absolutely bombed down the grid Mary had set up the weekend before. You could practically hear him yell "Cannonballlllllllllll!" right back as he ignored me completely and just Did The Thing. His way.

Thank you for flying Air Connor, shut up and hold on

Connor had more impulsion than either of us knew what to do with that day, so even though I was in a Dressage saddle and had my leathers Dressage-length, I sent him down the grid anyway. Homie needed to burn some energy, and he's schooled enough that I knew I could let that grid and the consequences of his choices do that for me.

Part of the reason, I think, that he had so much impulsion was that damn Wow saddle. I told myself I was buying a cheap old whatever for Disco, and even though it's not yet professionally adjusted to fit him, Connor has been telling me loud and clear he likes it.

The mirrors are really helping too. Nothing like coming down the long side, seeing that his nose is crooked, and fixing the hand that's preventing it from being straight.

It's got flaps down to my ankles and blocks that I should hate and might actually be 20 years old and is the old style tree so it weighs more than an anvil and I paid basically $800 for it, so of course he likes it better than the Patrick I spent the better part of 3 years trying to get.

Giving me the world's tiniest collected canter over trot poles and then using that power to jump me out of the tack.

Like, he's going ridiculously well and is happy doing it. He's doing better collected canter than he ever did when we were showing Dressage. The kind that makes me think maybe I could still get my bronze on him.

Not super collected here, but this is a crazy well-balanced left lead canter for this horse. And no underneck.

But I'm not putting that kind of pressure on us. In fact, the only pressure I might be putting on us is a speedbump-level event in November with the rest of my barnmates. He's really enjoying jumping, so why not?

Things that are lost in this GIF: me yelling "That's not how that's supposed to work!" as he cantered all of the ground poles and hit every single one.

We are just having fun. Both of us. And that feels good.

Finally did it sanely. No cannonball. Good boy.

Yesterday I got two videos from CGP...of her jumping Connor 😂

Eeeeeeeeee

"He was getting a little bored of the Dressagey stuff. [Resident H/J trainer] had this little course set up and dropped everything down so he could have fun!"

If it's not obvious from the stills, Mary watched these two videos and her comment was "Add add add add add add" 😂

I laughed. "Putting that jump saddle to good use finally!" I was just delighted that she recognized he was bored and perhaps a little burnt out and changed the game on him like that. TBH I didn't even know she jumped! They ended that session with touching on "pirouette canter simple changes", but even if they hadn't touched Dressage at all, I wouldn't have been upset.

Apparently he didn't have gate problems with her!

Afterward, she posted these videos to her Facebook page and talked about how much fun she has with Connor, and plugged his breeder's Facebook page, which made me so happy! 

Connor gets bodywork from his Cincinnati lady this morning, then we have a lesson together, and then he's coming home with me. Have a good weekend, everyone!

Last night Mary, her husband and baby Annie came out to play. I have so much going on on the weekends right now, they have to come on a weeknight - but we all agreed it still feels absolutely miraculous that we can hang on on weeknights at all!

I had stalls and a barn meeting, so Mary set up a jump course and did all of the riding. I described said jump course as "torture" and Mary called it "fun". It was a circle of death at one end of the ring with two crossrails four strides off of it on both long sides.

I stood there watching them with my mouth open. I genuinely don't recognize this horse anymore.

Also we honestly didn't plan this level of color coordination, it just happened, lol

WHO ARE YOU

I mean it wasn't all pretty, especially to the left, which is 0% surprising since that's the hock I have trouble convincing him to use in Dressage too. 

But they cleaned it up by the end of the ride.

Of course we ended the night with pony rides, with Annie in her new pony helmet that she refuses to take off at home, lol.

This is the smallest helmet Ovation makes. She had been riding in a bike helmet up to this point.

Next up is hauling to Cincinnati today for a remedial geometry lesson before the shows next weekend. I am not sure my trainer wants to be seen in public with me again until I clean up my 3 loop serpentine shape, lol...

Happy weekend, everyone!

Last weekend we had another "Amateur Hour" at the barn, and this time the BO's daughter got to join in on the fun, the one who designed the barn as her high school senior project(!). She's moved to Florida to be with her water skiing instructor husband (tough job to have in Indiana, you know), but she still deeply loves the barn, and I miss her dearly, she's just an all around awesome person.

She came out and was like "I'm just here to watch, I couldn't even fit half chaps in my carry on!" and I was like "Oh no you're not, you're getting a jump lesson on Connor!". Her background is almost entirely Western Pleasure, except after my trainer's program moved in she fell in love with Dressage, and she's been taking weekly lessons on a 28 year old 4th level schoolmaster in Florida for a couple years now. She's a "game for anything" kind of person so I knew she'd take me up on it.

"Oh my gosh, he's wearing three different colors of sparkles," she said. I was like, "You came from Western Pleasure world, AND?"  😂

I warmed her up on the flat, telling her not to be shy about taking up contact and asking for stuff. I find it increasingly easy to instruct people on how to ride him after his full training adventure, and I'm tickled when my advice actually makes him go well for people who have never ridden him before.

I wasn't THAT mean about her not having half chaps - I gave her my MDC irons that keep the stirrup leather off your leg, which worked out surprisingly well. She was sore, but not bruised!

Connor was in a polite but low-energy mood for most of this ride, which I didn't object to since a stranger fairly new to jumping would be popping him over stuff. No need to light a fire under his butt for that.

Once they were warmed up, Mary took over teaching the lesson, first starting with a discussion of the physics of the two point while standing, then starting her over poles at the trot, then the canter, then finally she put the first element up to an X. And he was THE BEST LESSON PONY. Mary turned around to me after this GIF ends and was like "JEN! He is totally taking care of her! Who is this pony, cantering politely out of the line like this?! He's being like a foot perfect lesson pony for her!"

Mary: "He is being on his best behavior for you, normally he wouldn't canter out of a line like this."

By the end, they rocked a tiny vertical, Connor still just being perfect for her (and a little more forward and awake!)

The BO's daughter, for her part, absolutely fell in love with him. She kept saying things like "He's so handy! He makes the Warmblood I ride feel slow and heavy," and "I feel like I could do anything on him." She's being pushed by her trainer to start horse shopping, and she was seriously asking me questions by the end of the ride about buying a Cob. We have another convert, my life's mission! #yougetaCob #andyougetaCob

Another barnmate joined in the lesson again, and her horse was being a bit of a butthead about stopping in a straight line after fences, so Mary got on and put the fear of Jesus into him. "She can really ride," the BO's daughter said almost reverently. I was like "I know, everything she sits on improves."

First attempt - he was SO convinced he knew better than she did about going around the corner after the line.

Last attempt - "Yes ma'am"

After that we hung out for wine, cheese, fresh bread, and watching Mary's husband and Annie ride Zippy together. Love these warm spring days!

On Saturday, Mary and Annie came down for their weekly visit. Mary asked what I worked on the night before with CGP so she could tailor his jumping work to help my Dressage work. I said CGP said the biggest thing we had to work on was increased collection and engagement.

#momlife

She set up an exercise that when eventually built out was placing pole, crossrail, one stride, Swedish oxer, one stride, Swedish oxer, placing pole. Her justification for this was that with two oxers in a row, that would force him to sit back and really use his hind end between the fences in a way that one oxer sandwiched by verticals would not.

Everybody's jumping!

Through the course of doing this exercise, she figured out a couple of key things. First, he is really committed to doing what he wants to do naturally, which is to go through the line crooked and drifting and tipping his wither to one side, just like he does on the flat. "I mean, I thought the Swedish oxer would encourage him to jump the easiest part of the jump, which is the middle, but he was like thanks but no, I'd rather jump the high part crooked," she said, surprised.

"I don't think he thinks that way," I said. "He ALWAYS makes it over, even if the jump is higher than he thought or he gets a bad spot or he spooks at it. I'm not sure level of effort crosses his mind, at least with the fences set to this height, where even the high end is something he knows he's capable of."

Jumping the high part crooked - Mary riding passively

I encourage you guys to click through to view the GIFs in gallery view and watch the previous GIF and the next one side by side to see a subtle but clear example of this, and of our other big revelation (more to Mary than to me) which is that Connor needs an active ride through the exercise in order to improve.

Mary said, "I set this exercise up in such a way that I thought the exercise would teach him the right way to go through it, but I think he really needs me to show him how to do it right." I said, "Well, he's not an eventer anymore, he's spent the last six years being told where every footfall should go in a Dressage court, he's used to being micromanaged now. And plus, this horse has always been a follower, he's most confident when he's got a strong leader dishing out orders."

Huge difference from the previous attempt (which is the previous GIF) - Mary riding actively. We ended on this one.

After Mary jumped Connor, Annie rode Connor, then Mary taught a barnmate an impromptu (unpaid!) lesson over the same gymnastic line, then Annie rode her favorite geriatric retired Quarter Horse Zippy:

Moving better than ever after getting his shoes pulled and an injection of some kind

And we finished the day with some Meatloaf jumping, doing PM barn chores and playing in the big field.

Insert Lion King quote here

Couldn't ask for a more perfect first day of Spring!

Last weekend, Mary and I finally pulled together an "Amateur Hour" on Saturday, in which we did a group jump lesson taught by Mary (free and with no remunerations exchanged of course) and then we all hung out for wine, fresh bread and a charcuterie board from the local butcher shop.

Hangin'  in the the barn's office

Mary took her job very seriously, and she's a darn good eq teacher. She started us off with a really cool unmounted exercise, in which she had us stand on a rocking chair to get a feel for why the motion of the horse leads weenie ammies like us to do many of the common jumping position faults. She said a lot of problems occur because horse and rider are moving in a static pace together on the approach, but then the horse has to accelerate over the fence (not in terms of speeding up to the jump, but the takeoff power required to get over the fence), which the weenie ammie's position is not ready to absorb.

First she had us stand on the rocking chair in a good jump position, and feel how the motion of the chair rocking underneath us mimicked the horse's head, neck and shoulders launching forward into the jump from the takeoff position. It really did! For the rest of this, imagine the horse's head, neck and shoulders is the chair's back, and the tail is toward the mounting block.

My barnmate A here has never really jumped before, for the record.

Next she had us do it "wrong". First up, jumping ahead. She had us straighten our legs and put our hands forward as we rocked the chair back and forth a bit. As an expert jumping ahead'er, I was kind of shocked by just how much this position felt like what it really feels like in the saddle. My weight immediately went onto my toes, and my center of gravity got pitched forward over the " horse's neck".

Jumping ahead

Next, getting left behind and catching the horse in the mouth. For this one she had us straighten our legs and put our hips forward until we felt our center of gravity move. Your hands couldn't not move backwards in this position when the horse's neck went up. It was pretty eye opening how interconnected all of these faults are.

Getting left behind and catching your horse in the mouth

Finally, she talked about how the movement of your hips closing to absorb the motion properly over the fence feels like a backward jump squat on the ground: solid position, lots of energy propelling the hips backward, but with enough control to land in a good solid energy-absorbing position on the other side. So we jumped off of the rocking chair backwards, and then immediately upon hitting the ground did a second backwards jump squat.

After that, she built up an exercise that eventually at the end became placing pole, crossrail, one stride, crossrail, one stride, vertical, placing pole. She jacked up my stirrups to hole 12 (I do Dressage at 3, jumping flatwork at 5, and the highest I had ever gone before was 11 on XC back in the day) and had me do a bunch of times through the exercise going into it in my jumping position with my hands "touching Connor's ears" to encourage my hips to go back. 

Started out a little rough, but look at my hips going back! If you want to know what my normal jumping position is like, it's that picture of me on Flounder I posted a week or so ago. Standing up in the stirrups and neutralizing all my shock absorbers for no reason.

This is the first time anyone has REALLY worked with me on eq. I've gotten a lot of functional position lessons in the past, but nothing that has gone into the physics of jumping like this. And part of it is that Connor is finally normal enough over fences to be a good platform for learning how to jump on.

Look at this progress!

At the end, she put the last one up to a "probably 2'3" vertical. And as I was trotting into this line, staring down the biggest fence we had jumped in quite honestly probably 5 years, I was struck by how not worried I was about it. It looked huge, but I trusted my horse, and that was a super cool feeling.

My position wasn't quite as good over these, but getting over the vertical at the end was a huge mental accomplishment.

Finally, at the end, we convinced my barnmate who has never really jumped before (and sat out the lesson doing her own thing while we jumped) to get on Connor and go through the line with poles on the ground. Connor is starting to earn a status as everyone's lesson pony at my barn after he taught a barnmate about connection two weeks ago and then this barnmate about jumping last weekend. Makes my heart happy <3

Lesson pony extraordinaire, taking care of everyone

On Wednesday night this week, Mary came out and we decided to try to jump Aeres over "weird stuff" with a rider aboard for the first time to see what happened. We had lunged her over these same objects (flower boxes and barrels) a few weeks ago, and she had peeked at them but went right over, so we hoped it wouldn't be too wild.

It was not wild. In fact, it was the opposite of wild. This was her first time ever jumping those barrels, and the barrels were the least exciting thing that happened in this line:

Mary pulled her up and said "Oh my gosh, now I REALLY think she'd love eventing. CONNOR would have snorted and propped at those barrels and she didn't even flick an ear at them!"

Since I showed you that attempt where she went bowling for that oxer (after not touching it the first four times she went over it, I might add), I feel the need to redeem her reputation by showing you her very next attempt, which was the one we ended on that night:

She is just so game and has such precise awareness of where her feet are in relation to things like poles. It's so much fun to see her find her place in the world like this!

I had the day off yesterday, so Mary came down for some extended pony time in which we rode both ponies, free jumped my barnmate's mare, and Annie rode both Connor and Zippy.

Dada even got in on the fun. And shortly after Mary turned them loose, he loped, on purpose lol (Zippy's a WP horse, so it's not as impressive as it sounds, but still). Mary was like "I haven't even cantered with Annie yet!" and then immediately had to get on and canter with Annie, haha. The Brockcamp bareback pad Kristen sold me is a perfect baby saddle!

Mary had been dying to jump Connor ever since he came home, although I know she's nervous about "messing up his Dressage training," even though I know she won't. I've been curious to see him over fences myself, since he learned leg + hand = put yourself together at Dressage boot camp. And when I came back in from putting Aeres away to her warming up like this:

Wowza

I said she could ride him like that anytime!

We had set up a line that we could push back against the wall for the free jumping exercise later, and built it up from ground poles. I had a "hmmm" moment early on, as Connor seemed engaged and relaxed - not words I normally describe him while jumping.

I'm sure some of you haven't been around for this entire saga, but I did fail him as an event horse because of his weird jumping motion (pointing his chest down at the ground in front of the fence, almost touching his nose to it and then often taking off from a standstill). 

Well...

Turns out learning to go around with his chest up and his abs and butt engaged may have been just what was missing in his jumping training. Even at this height it was obvious something big had changed about the way he approached jumps. And then when we put the sticks up a bit...

We both simultaneously started freaking out as soon as he finished this line. Side note, can we talk about how Mary hasn't been able to jump regularly in 10 years and her eq is STILL THIS GOOD?!

That was his FIRST TIME over that oxer and first time jumping anything that big in probably 3 years. We actually quit there. Mary was like "Jen! This is all I've ever wanted for you! It feels easy to him now, you could actually work on your eq on him for the first time."

CAN WE JUST. OMG. Is this really my horse?

And then as if my heart couldn't possibly be even happier after seeing that, we quit there (after only doing the line with the fences up 2 or 3 times because he was foot perfect through the entire thing), stripped his saddle, and let him cool out "over fences" with his favorite little jockey:

I was just smiling ear to ear taking this video. To have a horse with the ability to go as far as I want to in Dressage, that jumps an oxer like that, and then immediately turns around and takes such good care of a baby is worth so much to me. He really is my heart horse forever <3.

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!