Cob Jockey

My regular lesson slot (for five years now!) is 7pm on Thursdays, so since the last two Thursdays were Christmas Eve and New Years' Eve, I have some makeup lessons coming.



I took my first one on Saturday afternoon, and it was awesome.  I got on and could immediately tell my trainer had been on him lately - he was totally sensitive to my aids.

We did a couple of walk laps in shoulder in, and then picked up the trot.  It was...lackluster.  My trainer yelled from the opposite end of the arena, "Prepare for the corners by doing shoulder in ahead of time.  More bend!" and finally a lightbulb went off in my head to complement the "how much thigh do you need for shoulder in" lightbulb that went off a few weeks ago: lots of thigh PLUS asking him to soften his jaw at the same time with the inside rein is MAGIC SAUCE.  "Good!  I don't ever want to see another corner with him falling out," my trainer said.

"Yes, hello?"

I mean...I've done both of those things almost simultaneously before, although the AMOUNT of thigh I have to use is certainly a new discovery.  But I've never done the two at precisely the same time before.  It was like I flipped a "Dressage horse switch" in his brain.  (Really that's just called "Getting enough bend.")

It was in a break after that that I asked a stupid question: "It takes SO MUCH inside thigh to get where we need to be in shoulder in right now, should I be wearing spurs to accentuate my leg?"  The answer is "NO, spurs do not affect bend or spine, they only affect the hindquarters.  No spurs."  I know spurs don't affect the bend, but damn he is a thigh workout right now and it would be awesome if someone made a thigh spur.  Time to start weaning him off of that big of a thigh aid, gradually.

Gratuitous tail photo, sadly rubbed at the top by his blanket.

We moved on to a new exercise, which was a spiral in/out on a 20m circle, but through the half pass.  It is definitely not something I could have done without her constant guidance, but Connor loved it.  He was concentrating so hard and really thinking about what we were asking, which caused my trainer to complement how in tuned to each other we've become lately.  We've definitely moved to a new stage in our relationship, four years in.

I turned him loose this night after our ride, and he spooked at that sprinkler every time we went by.  Then what does he head straight for when I take his tack off?  The thing that's been scaring him all night, to investigate it.

You know that quote that's like "You can't grow unless you get pushed out of your comfort zone?"  At the end, we were doing that spiral in/out half pass exercise at the trot, and Connor was giving it all he had.  He was on the bit and on the brink - not past the brink, but he was where he wasn't sure he could do any more than he was doing.  It was an awesome feeling to feel progress being made like that.

Since my suddenly very busy barn and trainer are short on open lesson times (she typically only teaches private lessons), tonight's makeup lesson involved crashing EquiNovice's weekly lesson!  Thanks for letting me crash!

I took one really blurry picture of her, which she'll probably post to her blog too, because this is what we must do for photos around here.

It was a continuation of and expansion on my last lesson, but now Connor's really getting the message about tempo being set in my core and I can do some serious work on both of our body positions.

Biggest revelations were:
- Putting my outside leg on was instant magic in every direction.
- When she told me to "sit neutrally", it was a good prompt phrase for me to remember to drape my legs around him and check for evenness in both seatbones.  If I expect his back to carry me evenly (this is the point of all this) I have to do my part there too.
- I was bracing with my legs a lot, which made me not really sit in the saddle.  I thought about Sally Swift's "stubby legs" to correct that.  When I did, he slowed down and relaxed.
- When I stopped bracing with my legs, I suddenly understood the whole "asking for the bend from the upper inside of your thigh" thing.  I couldn't apply my thigh to his side with my leg where it normally is.

But let's be real, my biggest accomplishment this week is that his mane is still all on one side 24 hours after being pulled, with no braids or neck cover.  I WIN, MANE!

We moved on to trotting tonight in the same exercise, and it took a while for him to stop being fussy in the bridle and throwing in a hop step every so often, but we got there.

EquiNovice and I also got to bumble through baby half pass together!  It was both Connor and I's first time trying it.  At that same slow but impulsive walk, my trainer had us do shoulder in, ask for half pass, shoulder in, half pass.  I could feel Connor trying to puzzle it out at first.  Surprisingly, he was really good at it in what I consider to be his bad direction, in which I really have to work for good bend.

My crowning achievement.  It's been three years since it all laid on one side!

At the end, my trainer asked me if I had internalized the lesson enough to do things correctly on my own.  I said  "You're seeing me each of the next two days, I don't have an opportunity to do it wrong!"

Boot camp is great!

You know that saying, it goes something like "stupidity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?"  I would be stupid without my trainer.  We tried some decidedly unusual, but effective, things in my lesson yesterday.

I let him lick some coffee off my hand before our lesson.  He was not impressed.

My lesson yesterday started with leg yielding.  Off the left leg, it was smooth.  Off the right, I got nothing.  "Try something for me," she said.  "Don't touch your right rein.  Even if he bends the wrong way, just let him make some mistakes.  You're pushing him over with the right rein instead of inviting him over with the left and riding inside leg to outside rein."

So I did.  And that, plus asking louder and in better rhythm with my leg aids, gave me some really good leg yields to the left.  So the rest of the lesson was spent de-emphasizing my right rein.


At the walk: "Your right arm is actually moving less with him than your left, and I constantly have to tell you to shorten it, which means you've got to be riding diagonally too."  So she told me to straighten my right arm, to ride with less of an angle in it than the left, and it made a big difference, but trying to straighten it and not use it as much made me keep letting it slide through my fingers."

"I'll be right back."  She disappeared into the barn and came back with bright blue electrical tape.  She figured out how long she wanted my reins to be at the trot, then had me hold them there while she wrapped tape in front of my thumb and behind my hand, with the idea that my hands needed to stay in those "boxes".

Bleh, bleh, bleh.

It worked pretty well.  Visually, neither one of us had to guess if I was letting the reins slip through my fingers.  The tape didn't lie.  But it only told me if the right rein was slipping, it didn't prevent the slip, so she had me come into the ring for "one more thing."

She took the reins over Connor's head, with the buckle end under his neck, and gave me the reins back, with the tape.  I'll take a picture later this week.  With the reins like that, I couldn't shorten the reins because there was no excess to shorten.  It was a really weird feeling, but was incredibly effective.  We ended up with some serpentines that were just bangin' all around.  Balanced, with me asking for each turn by first sliding the new inside seatbone forward, then giving a bit with my outside rein "so that the outside of his body can come around the inside."

Letting his mane grow long, and keeping him in a hood all winter in an attempt to train his mane back over.

The diagnosis is that I hold him so much with the right rein, in an attempt to micromanage and prevent him from making mistakes, that he'll never be responsible for himself if I don't let go.  He was so straight and through on those serpentines - without me holding him in either rein - that I am inclined to believe that theory.  Our homework for the week is to do more with the reins under his neck like that (with twine connecting them, so that I can do it without her handing me the reins), and I am interested to see what happens.

Got to the barn last night, realized I forgot my Dressage bridle/bit at home, but couldn't school fences since there are still no fences in the indoor.  So I schooled Dressage in his jump bridle and bit, and he was awesome for the first 15 minutes, because I focused on that outside hind thing from the very beginning.

He was straight, REALLY pushing from behind, responsive to the slightest aid, mouthing the bit, my hands were soft, his lateral work was fantastic...until he started sticking his tongue out the side of his mouth.  The other woman riding in the indoor alerted me to it.  "He looks awesome, except for that tongue," she said.

Sigh.  This is Connor letting me know in no uncertain terms that that bit is too much leverage when he's really on my aids and thinking "DRESSAGE!" like that.  I didn't blame him, and also didn't want to start any bad habits, so I called it an early night.  He'd done all of the exercises from our last lesson really well until the tongue came out, so it's not like we were slacking.

(Of course, on my drive home I realized I could have just put my reins on the big ring and taken away the leverage action, but hey.  First time I've owned an elevator, give me a pass on that one!)

Afterward I took a phone call while brushing his coat until it gleamed.  Too bad that coat's going to be gone on Saturday.

"I forgot my saddle at home, do you want me to go bareback or borrow a saddle?"

Bemused laughter.  "Umm...bareback, if that's okay with you."

"Sure."  (My sore muscles from CrossFit said no, my mouth said yes.)

I freakin love him.

It ended up being an awesome lesson, and I'll say our Dressage was better than it was Sunday, but we were focusing on lateral movements and total pony body control, so that makes sense.

The big exercise of the lesson was this:

To get warmed up for it, shoulder in, then 8m circle at each letter.

Then:

Shoulder in coming around the corner, two steps forward in shoulder in down the long diagonal, then with the horse's body at that same angle, move him back to the rail.  So the outside hind is the only thing that should hit the rail.

It was hard at first, but as he got softer and more on my aids, it got easier.  Once we had it both directions at the walk, then we did it at the trot.  We really had some mojo going then - especially when she told me to "ride my outside hip around the circle".  I think that also helped me weight that seatbone more, and I felt him come underneath me more evenly when that happened (very obvious without a saddle.)

Finally, we ended up with canter and yes, hand gallop bareback.  What!  I used to be such a chicken bareback.

Right now, our big goal is to hand off some of the responsibility for keeping the gait/impulsion/bend/whatever to Connor so that I don't have to micromanage as much anymore, and that's mostly what we did at the canter.  Time for him to take responsibility for his own body and get him more confirmed in this stuff so I'm free to do other things.  (That sounds like I'm handing off his training to him and leaving to watch TV or something.  Ha.  Totally not the case.)

He's been shedding for a while, but today he started SHEDDING.  Bye bye, summer coat.

And we ended with some best friends time, grazing in the dark on the last 80 degree day of the year.  So long, summer, it was nice knowing you.

I could look at that body all day.  So different from when I first got him.

Bad horse for sale photos: "LOOK HOW UPHILL MY HORSE IS, GUYS!"

Beautiful evening.

Connor must have felt like I needed a reminder that progress doesn't go linearly forward, because yesterday's ride was no bueno.  You have two options for a bad ride: you can work through it and realize that he's having a bad day, or you can get frustrated and feel like he's regressing.  I was relaxed and didn't get worked up about it, though it was a nice reminder that we could easily go back to fighting and me holding him if I chose to view yesterday as a step backward.

Where's his birdie?  Not on me! (Jan 2013)

Another Dr. Deb Bennett-ism is "Where's his birdie?"  It's meant to be a quick and memorable way of saying "Where's his attention?"  Connor's birdie, for our first after-work ride in a month, was planted firmly on the following:

- Snow sliding off the roof of the indoor.
- Sun casting weird shadows inside the indoor.
- Geldings galloping up the track to their stalls from turnout.
- Missing dinner

I was definitely not his birdie last night.  He kicked out when I used my artificial aids, ran into the canter, turned his head to look outside every time we passed a window, leaned on the bit if I was weak in my upper back, and was angrily reactive to my half-halts.

I chose to combat it with first a wet saddle blanket (figuratively speaking), by getting up off his back and letting him do whatever underneath me at the canter.  Not being a Thoroughbred, he went from raring to go to blowing in about two laps, at which point I added a bunch of trot-canter transitions, still in two point.  After that, I went straight into body control work, lateral stuff, transitions, keeping his brain active.

I never felt like I got my compliant, willing partner back, but at least I got some good lateral work and non-running or bucking walk-canter transitions out of him in the end, even if I had to make him do it.  Anyone else's horses had an off-day recently?   I feel like we will have more of these in the future, heading into the transition to a spring schedule.

This is going to be long and winding, but I need to internalize this both physically and mentally, so here goes.

Wet pony after a bath!

The last three weeks have represented the most dramatic position changes I've ever made as a rider, and they paid off today in an unexpected makeup lesson that was the best ride I've ever had on any horse.  The way I sit in the saddle, and the way it feels to hold the reins, have both completely changed in the past month.

I'm sitting up, I'm sitting deep, my shoulders are back because I'm engaging the underdeveloped muscles between my shoulder blades, my core muscles feel like they're three inches longer than normal, my legs are longer around his barrel, my hip angle is more open, and I'm coming through my arms with the motion of my torso rather than going backward and tensing in my lower back.

A month ago, when Connor felt my hands take up contact, he would lean on me because my shoulders were round.  Now, he feels the muscle between my shoulder blades (which was VERY atrophied before I started this) and softens, relaxes and carries his own weight.  It's sort of miraculous, I'm still amazed every time it happens.

Then when the reins are free to do things like effective half-halts that encourage him even more to sit back and lighten his front end, my seat becomes so much more useful - halts are a matter of closing my leg and stretching my already tall core muscles just a bit taller, instead of "no brakes!"  It's not been easy.  I hear things like "Take your right hand away from your body, you're blocking him from being able to do what you're asking, you'll feel like you're able to do that more when you're using the outside rein properly" and "Walk his left side up with your seat," and "Sit over the right side too," from my trainer - lots of body awareness stuff.

My trainer kept gushing, "Jen, this is AWESOME!" and it really was.  I've never felt him so supple before, and knowing that it was the culmination of a LOT of hard work on both of our parts made both of us feel good.  Knowing that I'm carrying my weight physically so that he could carry his weight physically made me feel good too.  Three weeks ago the lesson after mine canceled and we ending up going for an hour-and-a-half long lesson that ended in the dark, in which both my trainer and I swapped off several times, just working on suppling him and getting me to feel how to make that happen.

From that point on, it's been one intense practice ride after another, even though all we did was walk (plus some hacking in between, of course) and NO jumping or even riding in my jump saddle.  My practice rides consisted of never letting him take a step that wasn't completely controlled from beginning to end by me: lots of lateral work, suppling work, quicker aids, and demanding sharper reactions.  Three weeks of that and I have a supple, sharp pony.  Three weeks plus the last two years, but you know.  Still feels like we've been on learning overdrive since I really started to internalize those position changes.

"He was really, really good when I rode him yesterday," my trainer said with a huge smile and a laugh as I was talking up.

"I figured, judging by the number of exclamation points and emoticons in that text!" I said.

She giggled.  "Out of all the horses I rode yesterday, I had the most fun with him - he was just so engaged and really 50% in both reins, and straight.  And his canter work...wow, was it good."

It wasn't until later on in the lesson, after we'd effortlessly switched back and forth between shoulder-in and haunches-in every few strides, worked on lightening our contact to more of what you'd use with an educated horse rather than a green one, done some magnificent trot work and started turns on the haunches, when I accidentally cued him for the canter, did I really understand what's happened to Connor lately, with the rides she's put on him and the progress we've made.

That accidental canter transition was so good, it caught me off-guard when he sat straight down on his hocks and his front end came up what felt like a good six inches.  I pitched forward, because I expected his flat, "runny" canter, which goes forward and never up.  All I saw was flaxen mane coming toward me as he elevated his front end for the transition and stayed there into the gait.

My eyes must have been huge.  "Whoa!" I said.  My trainer laughed.  "You've probably never felt anything like that before, have you?"  My mind flew back to high school, to a single ride I had on an imported third-level Hanoverian mare, the only other time I've ever felt anything like that - and I seriously had no idea what I was doing then.  "No," I said.  "Now this time, ride a couple of shoulder-in/haunches-in transitions, then ask again and sit back this time.  Let him come up under you."

What happened next was mind-blowing.  I got that same canter transition, and I had a soft, round, packaged Connor beneath me at the canter, with almost no weight in the reins.  I've never gotten that before.  I've had him round once or twice, but not round, connected and sitting and using himself like that.  The progress we have made at the trot is translating into the canter, a gait we still don't work as often as the others.  "Just wait til you have a canter like that going to the base of the fence - you'll love that," she said.

She also got on him today to demonstrate something to me, and showed me what I was feeling with those canter transitions.  It was as amazing to see as it was to feel.  She never stopped smiling while she cantered him, and I have to say, I know the feeling.

Post-lesson: no sweat!  BO said today that he thinks Connor's clip looks like the two-toned paint job on a '68  Mustang.

Since I posted about an unconventional thing that helped my riding on Friday, why not do it again today? 

Earning his oats on a 60 degree November day.  T-shirt weather again!

Today I rode Connor in the grassy field across the road, and then had an idea: why not ride in the road?  We live in a rural area.  The road is wide, flat, paved, and you can see cars coming from about a half mile in each direction, and I've ridden Connor on roads enough to know he's fine with cars coming both ways.  Curious, I hopped on it after we'd already done enough to tire him in the grassy field.

I soon came to realize that the road was awesome for helping me with developing timing for the lateral work, because it added an important element to each footfall: sound.  When I was able to identify the strike of the outside hind, I was able to half-halt with very precise timing, and of course, when I'm doing my job correctly Connor always follows suit.  We zigzagged our way down the road and then up the road, doing leg yields as we went.  Besides the sound element, the two sides of the road also served to help me identify when he was going crooked, as we were never too far from the "arena fence" like we could be in an arena.  I really liked the results we got from it, and I will definitely do it again in the future.

After we were done, since we had the barn to ourselves and our cross-tie area can be shut off from everything else with gates, I decided to start working on "ground tying" with the tired pony.  Not really a necessary skill for him, or one I plan on using often, but rewarding him for standing still while the lead rope is draped over him could prove helpful in certain situations.  So, he stood in the wide aisle with the gates closed while I swept the floors as one of my final chores, and I gave him a treat every so often.  If he moved even a single foot, I put that foot back where it started.  He seemed to like the idea of getting treats for doing nothing.

Other than that, enjoy some scenes from my morning of stall cleaning and trough filling in sunny, warm southern Indiana:

I like to lay on the grass and sleep while the troughs are filling.

DJ came over to say hi.

Pride was countering my attempts to fill the trough by drinking out of it.

Watching my own little guy as I fill his trough.

I love this place.

At my lesson tonight, my trainer asked how my practice rides went this weekend.  I told her about riding bareback in order to feel myself using my body unequally, cantering bareback and how much that helped me when I went back to riding in a saddle on Sunday.  Intrigued, she had me drop my stirrups at the very beginning of the lesson and I ended up never picking them back up during another spectacular lesson.

Connor pre-lesson, untethered and falling asleep in the wash rack.

This wasn't a physical fitness challenge.  Taking my stirrups away took away my ability to brace against something and contort my body into strange shapes while asking for the lateral stuff.  It also made it very obvious that I brace in both stirrups when doing a downward transition, causing him to fall out from under me rather than rise up under me. She had me keep my calves on him, and to do that I had to hold my legs where they normally would be in stirrups. This revealed that I like to keep my leg off of him, as a result of him liking to shoot forward when I try to put a different leg aid on him (lateral or holding).  When I kept my inside leg on him while I had the outside rein, boom, instant connection.  I would never have realized that in stirrups.

She also had me work on being "lazier" with my body.  She asked me to sit longer on him at the trot, and he responded by sitting down and really engaging with his hind end.  We got the same quality of trot that we got out in the field in the indoor, and then some.  "He is really moving totally differently!" my trainer said.  I focused on engaging my core, but relaxing my lower back, and also letting my elbows feel heavy so that my hands could raise and encourage him to stay up with me.

Yes, that is a curved line that should be straight.  Can I call it 'art'?

I also had a revelatory moment with trot transitions, in which she pointed out that I was...busy...with my upper body during the upward transition, causing him to shoot forward.  When I stilled my upper body (I still don't know how I was active, though I definitely felt a difference when I thought "still") he moved off quietly and roundly into a trot with magnificent impulsion.

Finally, we ended at the canter, and he was so on the bit at this point that he made my job easy.  I asked for a leg yield just before the transition, and had him so well packaged that several times he stepped into a wonderful canter.  He then promptly lost it within a few strides, but hey, that's the first step, right?  He would also get it back right at the end when I first thought about bringing him back to the walk.  Note to self, for future lessons: think walk, continue cantering.

I feel giddy.  I love this pony so much!  The best part, honestly, is that he is so happy doing the work and he's willingly offering everything to me.  He's got that sparkle back. 

I had one of those lessons today that makes it all worth it.

This lesson, within the span of an hour, showed me just how far I'd come in both flat and fences.

After last week's grueling no-stirrups workout in the Dominique Barbier Dressage saddle (he doesn't believe in making the saddle comfortable.  Seriously.) on Dillon (which I neglected to write about, but let's just say I wasn't walking properly for three days afterward) she put me on Dillon again this week, but in the close contact saddle this time.

In the first half of the lesson, it was what I'd call an on-going Dressage test: she'd call a movement out to me as I was getting to a letter, and we worked continuously with no breaks for about twenty minutes.  She really drilled me on changing his bend, and on leg yields.  And after seven months of struggling, not being able to do them at all in the beginning, I got them perfectly.  Multiple times.  It's like I've finally coordinated my body parts and put some of them on autopilot so that I can think about what his body is doing and how I need to change it instead of thinking constantly about where my body is.  Both directions, every time she asked, bam, leg yield, shoulder in, anything she asked, I gave.

My favorite part of the Dressage part of the lesson was when she asked me to do some sort of lateral movement, and I executed it perfectly.  Her entirely automatic response was "And you got it!" as if she were shocked that I pulled it off, and I called her out on it, and we both had a good laugh about it.  Really, I can't blame her, I rode like someone pulled a body switch with me and a much more advanced rider today.

Then we switched to jumping, and for the first time since I started jumping, I felt happy and content going over the fences.  I did not feel out of control, I did not feel apprehensive, I did not feel scared.  Even when we did a four fence course that included a two-stride combination, I approached it with a mindset that was more like "That is a fence, and this is what I need to do to jump it the best I possibly can," rather than "OHMYGOD A FENCE how am I going to survive it?"

Not only was my brain in the right place, but my body was.  Not every fence was perfect, but by the end of the lesson I was seeing distances, really seeing them, and rating Dillon as necessary.  I felt like I was with him, and if I were to envision the ride in pictures, Dillon and I would have been water flowing over the jump.  At least, after years of being so nervous going up to and over the fence, that's what it felt like to me.

My trainer's careful instruction, structured in such a remarkably effective way, is really changing my life.  She's so talented at bringing out the best in horse and rider.  If you ever have the chance to ride with her, I highly recommend it.

Wow.  Just wow.