Cob Jockey

I was supposed to have more or less back-to-back lessons on Connor last weekend, with one on Friday and one on Sunday, BUT on Saturday our roommate called to let us know he had taken an "exit" COVID test for school even though he had no symptoms at all, and tested positive, so we are now quarantining until Dec 2.

It is the most first world of first world problems to say that the only thing I'm upset about is that I'm going to miss riding and lessons, but I think you'll understand when you see how Friday's lesson went. Connor is educated to the point that every lesson, I'm learning in leaps and bounds and I'm so bummed to have to pause that!

On Friday, she asked to get on him first to "show me where he's at", and I had a hard time keeping my jaw off of the floor watching them go. Since mid-September, just over two months ago, she's taken him from being a maybe First Level horse with an incorrect understanding of collection to where all the pieces for 3-1 are passably there.

Full disclosure, her standards for someone being ready for the level are pretty high, so I'm not saying she WOULD show him 3-1 tomorrow, but she COULD.

I got on after her, and I'm going to put the two GIFs of both of us doing the same things on him to show you how differently he goes for her vs me. Not to throw myself under the bus, but to show the difference between a skilled rider that remembers to half halt and me, lol.

Even just warming up, he's a different horse. Look at how different his neck shape is, how the top of his neck is longer than the bottom:

Her warmup walk

My, uh, "just got on" walk

She's militant about never letting him get stiff in the bridle, and told me that "95% of the time, if he feels stiff, the right answer will be to apply the right leg and right rein and hold until he softens". She also said "It means something to him if you close your legs and then briefly close your hands now, put him together." Hello yes these are the kind of first toolkit adult amateur slow learner instructions I am here 👏 for 👏. 

I know the medium trots below aren't scoring an 8, but WOW you guys, the feeling of closing my legs and having INSTANT POWER is something I am not used to. This required a whole other level of core engagement to stay with him. 

Her medium trot

My medium trot, where you can see my abs just completely peace out in the middle from the unexpected force of holding him together

You can really see the difference in her canter vs mine. Mine has less energy (although this WAS 40 minutes into the ride) and the balance isn't nearly as good. Those two phrases could sum up the major differences between our riding in all gaits and movements. I'm not upset about it though, having a horse that I know understands how to go well means I just have to learn how to ride him well, I no longer have the responsibility of also teaching him to go well.

Her collected canter

My collected canter

She didn't intentionally show me any flying changes, but she did attempt a canter half pass (she hasn't done many with him and warned me it was a work in progress) and he gave her a change as a wrong answer. I think it's pretty cool that he knows what a change is well enough to be willing to see if it's the right answer to an ask he doesn't quite understand yet.

She also did a few things I didn't get to do but was happy to see, such as this extremely balanced counter canter. No more motorcycling and hanging on for dear life! 🙌

I did get to do shoulder-in but the Pivo missed it, so you'll just have to watch this clip of CGP and trust me when I say it is so accessible and easy now, it's kind of amazing. No more struggling to manufacture a S-I that's mostly neck bend for me!

I was just on cloud nine. More to come.

It's happening.  We have really turned a corner, and this stuff is sticking!  I mean literally, for the first time ever, I can see a future in which this horse does Third.  Like, we're not there yet, but the way I'm riding him now, it seems possible for the first time.

Connor: "Why is riding so much harder all of a sudden and also why is it this humid!"

I had my first lesson in a month last night and my trainer was just delighted, saying things like "This is what I always knew was in there!" and "You look so much more in sync with him" and "He looks like he's between your back and the reins more now" and "When you do it [leg yields in this case] right, it looks like you're dancing."

Dancing.  Leg yields.  Us!  Who knew!

I was excited to work on leg yields last night, because 1. ours have always been passable-not-great and 2. they're just hard enough to challenge me without being so hard that they threaten my ability to focus on my position.

Rolling with half of my new Schockemohle, long story

At first she identified that he was going sideways too much and that the rhythm broke down when there weren't enough forward steps.  She also identified that on the right rein LY'ing left he liked to swing his HQ to the outside, and in the opposite direction he tried to lead with his right (outside) shoulder in a big way.

On the right rein, she had me come around the corner thinking haunches in, and then contain him on the left until he had taken a few straight/HI steps before asking for the leg yield.  She also had me think about letting the left shoulder lead a bit instead of the HQ, which led to beautifully flowing LY's (for us).

To the left, my right thigh being off the saddle (and me sitting off to the left) was the whole cause of him darting out the right shoulder so heavily.  Just remembering to sit correctly and apply my right thigh made a huge difference here.

It was such a good ride.  I joked that I'm going for the Mary Wanless Most Improved Award at the October clinic (that I officially signed up for last week). That's not a thing, but it should be!

A while back, a barn I'd never heard of before posted that they were having NK, my other trainer, in for a two-day weekend "clinic".  Since NK never teaches on the weekends and I hadn't seen her since October (she winters in FL), I jumped alllllllll over that.

"Where am I?  And why am I tied to the trailer?"

On Saturday, we started out by essentially level-setting.  I described what we worked on over the winter, what was working (counter canter!), what wasn't working (canter-walk transitions) and what our show plans were for the year.

Then we got to work.  A few minutes in, she squealed "Oh my gosh, you have a half halt now!!!!"  From that point on, it felt like she became a different trainer.  Last year, it felt like she was teaching me to teach Connor the words, and after she realized I had a half halt on Saturday, it felt like we started putting sentences together.

No media from this, so here are some more shots from the KPG ride Photos by Leah

We moved from there onto leg yields, where it was obvious to her that (paraphrased) I thought my legs were in contact with his body, but they really weren't.  It manifests itself in so many seemingly unrelated ways, but basically, when my right hip is rotated down (my feeling, maybe not what's actually happening) my leg is correct.  My natural inclination is to do the opposite of that and even though my leg is touching his body, it's not making contact, if that makes sense.

NO SERIOUSLY, EXACTLY THIS!  See how my right side is contracted and my right hip is pointing up?  If I think about rotating my hip down, it fixes this and we can, y'know, actually do a leg yield.

After that, we moved on to the canter-walk transitions.  After watching a couple of canter transitions, she gave me another "it's not him, it's you" talk.  Summary: "He does need to develop some strength, but he's never going to be able to do canter-walk if you don't get out of his way.  You're pitching forward and losing your position from the moment he steps into the canter, and then you're bracing through your body for the downward.  You need to relax around him and sit on that hind leg, not brace."

Compare pitched forward onto my pubic bone...

To sitting on my butt...

To...sigh, yep, intentionally posting a less-than-beautiful moment to illustrate that he's never going to weight the outside hind unless I clean my act up.  This picture makes it really obvious.

Then came day 2...

When I walked into the ring with Connor, last of the day, a chorus of "awwww"s went up from the audience and KPG turned around and squealed when she saw him.  I swear she went from professional rider to 10 year old horse crazy girl in a second, it was so cool!

All photos in this post by Leah unless otherwise stated.

"What is he?!" she asked.  "Welsh Cob," I said.  She squealed louder.  "I have a Welsh Cob!  Here let me show you pictures of mine!"


In the end, it meant a lot to have someone that understood the breed teaching us.  Not only because they need a slightly different approach in general, but also because Connor started out the lesson being kind of a twit, and given KPG's experience with the breed, I was totally chill about it.


He was quiet as could be all day, but when I rode him into the covered he started doing his "Connor being ridden in a new place" thing - whinnying, running through my hands, and one short bolt.

KPG is not like any other clinician I've ridden with.  You can tell she does more riding and training than teaching, and that she's pretty far removed from the lower levels of Dressage in terms of knowing the tests.


But that said - none of that mattered one bit.  I loved riding with her and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.  It was so cool to see how an Olympian would approach riding and training my horse, and it was also nice to get some validation that our approach is correct.


She started us off on a 20m circle, just a lot of transitions - mostly walk and trot because every time we cantered he got strong and started whinnying.  But she didn't avoid the canter completely, just had me do it in short intervals on a smaller circle.


Once he'd settled down some and had a brief break, we moved on to using the full arena, transitions within gaits, and leg yields off the centerline in both directions.  Up until the leg yields, he was still running through me, and I was pulling against him.


She said she wanted to get him to lift from the base of the neck, and her feedback for me was to sit more deeply in the saddle, and that "with a hot horse, you need to keep your leg on, he needs to learn that your leg isn't going anywhere."


This was about the time I also got my biggest takeaway from the clinic.  We were on the left rein coming into a corner and she told me to "close your outside hand".  I know that seems minor, but it isn't, and I have a whole other post coming about that.


Finally at the end, she asked me if there was anything else I wanted to do.  I said I didn't know, that there's a lot we need help with but it all goes back to what I told her in the beginning and what she understood better than most people: that a lot of my problems stem from the fact that this is a breed historically bred to pull with their front end rather than shift weight onto the hind.


So she asked if we wanted to try half steps.  Neither one of us have ever done anything like that before in our lives - sure!

She had me revisit what we did earlier in the lesson - transitions within the walk, forward walk, slow as you can go walk, forward walk.  When he was suitably slow and I had enough contact to keep him in place, she had me "tap tap" lightly with the whip.

PC: Karen

This was interesting to me, because I've heard other upper level Welsh Cob dressage riders say they need to introduce the half steps to Cobs sooner than most breeds, because until they have them, they don't understand collection or develop a true lengthening.  Whether that's true or not obviously I'm not experienced enough to say, but I thought it was neat that KPG had me do them.


I had no idea what I was looking for in the half steps, but with KPG next to me telling me when to praise him, I developed a feel for it.  It felt like his whole body went up instead of forward for one second.  Not something I'll try without someone like NK next to me anytime soon, but it was really really cool to have tried it!


In the end, this will go down as one of the coolest horse experiences I'll ever have in my life.  Cannot thank Karen enough for giving us the opportunity to do this!

My husband actually kicked me out of the house yesterday and told me to go to the barn.  I spent Saturday snowed in and painting, and by Sunday, I was in full-on cabin fever mode.  He knew just what I needed, though, (or he just wanted to get rid of me for a few hours).

He saw the farm's dog digging in a snowpile.  Ignore the loop in the bridle, sometimes you just have to admit that keepers and winter gloves just do not mix.

I started out hacking him down the track, but then the herd in the big field across the road saw him, no doubt because he was obvious against the snow, and stood at alert and ran.  This turned my quiet ride into a prancy, alert ride, and I decided to head to the indoor and get some real work done.

Full alert pony.

The indoor wasn't much better, since it feels like it's been months since we rode in daylight, and the late afternoon sun was causing shadows and sunbeams.


But we did get some work in, a lot of cantering.  I asked for different gears in the canter like we did at the trot.  I also moved him back and forth laterally while cantering.  He's always been weirdly good at that, for a horse that once couldn't canter and also doesn't always remember how to leg yield at the trot.

Now he gets a week off, because I fly to Texas on Tuesday to first visit my best friend in Houston, then for Blogger Weekend, courtesy of my husband having more airline miles than he knows what to do with thanks to work.  I fully intend to bring Spring back with me when I get home on Sunday, so he better be ready!  It's time to go to work!

Winter is only good for gorgeous sunsets.

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.

This not-having-a-saddle thing is great.  You know what's really hard to do without a saddle?  Brace against your stirrups and make your horse crooked.  You know what my worst habits are?  Bracing against my stirrups and making my horse crooked.

I'm just going to break up this wall of text with pictures of Connor being cute, don't mind me...

My trainer asked how things were going at my lesson last night, and I said, "I'm sore, but he's straighter than ever!"  She, as usual, magically knew how to reinforce that straightness further, and had me bend-counterbend on a square in the middle of the ring without pulling on the reins until he was really listening to my seat, first at the walk and then at the trot.



When I'm bareback, either seatbone is on either side of his spine, and asking for bend feels like moving one seatbone and the top of my thigh closer to his spine than usual.  Her voice in my head from last summer: "Reins do not create the bend, the seat creates the bend!"

She also had me focus on aiming his chest straight at each wall once his shoulders were unlocked, which we differed in opinion on - he wanted to throw himself sideways down the short side and move straight on the long sides, but I said no (and almost came off once when we continued to "discuss" that right up to the wall, and he decided we were going one way while I wanted his shoulders in a different direction).


We moved on to bend-counterbend at the canter (picking up the canter has been the hardest without a saddle. I think my aids feel different to him, but I'm not sure how yet).  The last thing we did was a great exercise, which was:

- Trot down centerline, leg yield to wall at the opposite corner of the ring
- Pick up canter when you get to the wall
- Shallow loop down long side

The first time I did it, I made my loop too deep and Connor broke.  "That was...a bit too ambitious." But it got progressively better as I let go of the reins and focused on straightening him with my seat.  Toward the end, it felt like he was jumping into the canter in almost a leg yield in the second half of the shallow loop, and it was a really cool feeling.

4 CrossFit workouts and riding bareback all week...whew!