Cob Jockey

One of the biggest keys to getting Connor in self-carriage/balanced/OTB is catching the right shoulder, in both directions.  In both directions, he naturally moves the leg laterally away from his body, so that to the left, it manifests itself as a popped outside shoulder, and to the right, he steps into the ring to avoid bringing the outside of his body around and bending properly.

And I managed to get a perfect picture of that phenomenon when FBR was cooling him out on Tuesday:

Study this picture.  Study that right leg placement.  This is my entire Dressage life with this horse summed up in a single photo.

He can't get into self carriage, come on the bit, lift his back, or do any of other fun things he's capable of as long as he's traveling like that (read: crooked), so fixing it is a daily occurrence for me right now.

What are we doing to fix it?
To the right:
- Encourage him to take more time through every turn rather than whipping around it.  When he whips around turns (as shown in that photo), the inside fore almost cuts the corner on a diagonal even if his body technically isn't cutting the corner.  When he's taking more time to do the turn, the outside fore stays roughly same distance from the rail throughout the corner.

- Constantly have a dialogue in which I ask him to step into the outside (left) rein and soften on the right rein

- Right thigh asking for bend/blocking his sideways movement/narrowing the window in which his pony body is allowed to exist.

To the left:
- Initially, we had to make a big change here compared to what we did with the right, because he was very set in his ways with the left.  So we started with things like that exercise from February, in which we did a square on the left rein, counterbent, and encouraged him to initiate the turn from the inside (left) hind.

- Now, I spend my entire warmup catching that outside shoulder constantly.  He'll go around a turn leading with that shoulder and end up appearing to travel straight but actually traveling sideways.  So I block it hard with my outside (right) thigh (see a pattern here?) and many half halts on the outside rein.

Interestingly, once I have both, usually by the end of the warmup, once he's traveling in a balanced way, he no longer defaults to leaning on the right like that, and he'll stay straight the rest of the lesson, with minimal work on my part.  It gives me hope that maybe eventually he'll default to straight?  One can only hope.

Because life is pretty great when all four of his legs travel in the same direction. (April 2015)

One of the photos my Favorite Barn Rat got at the clinic is an excellent example of what "Falling Into the Hole" looks like:

Connor is putting me squarely into The Hole here.

We started identifying and working on this after his partial training month in April.  JLC described it as the points of his vertebrae rotating so much farther than they should be.  I believe he may have even used the word 'extreme' in Connor's case.  In the saddle, it feels like his back totally falls away from my seat on the right with every step.  When he's on my aids, his back stays flat, like a table.

Back level, on my aids, no Hole here.  Photo by Connor's breeder.

To fix it back in April, we first thought about "gluing the right seatbone to the saddle", which did help.  It seemed counterintuitive, but he stood up more when I did it.  What we're doing now is thinking "Up!" every time the right seatbone would otherwise go down.  It means my pelvis stays level and he usually raises that side up to meet me after feeling that change.

He also tends to halt squarely when he's keeping his back level - how's that for 'a leg on each corner', Lisa?  (Well-built Welsh Cobs are supposed to have "a leg on each corner".)  Photo by Favorite Barn Rat.

When he puts me in the hole, my entire body is ineffective and being moved around so much with each stride.  Staying out of the hole also requires tension in my lower back just above my pelvis, and even when doing all of that, he still tips me quite a bit at the beginning of each ride.  But the amazing thing is, once I get his back level, everything else falls into place and he gets very on my aids.

My trainer is not that much bigger than me, maybe 5" taller and about the same type of frame, but says its possible that I don't have enough mass to be as effective at staying out of The Hole right now, because even when I'm doing everything right, it's hard to neutralize a motion that big.   The end goal is to strengthen his back muscles and rewire his preferred way of going to the point that The Hole stops being so much of an issue.

Good pony.  Photo by Favorite Barn Rat.

Have any of you ever fought The Hole?

Connor and I have had a lot of time for introspection while my trainer has been gone, and we've made progress.

He's showing you that his fly bonnet (which he wore because it was windy) and saddle pad do not match.

My trainer asked me to not let him go on the forehand at all starting from our warmup, so I have obliged and progress has been made.  The left bend funkiness is also getting better, though miles from solved.

In my last lesson before she left, which I haven't written about, we got some great self-carriage out of him, and also had moments of complete failure, especially to the left.  Every time I got self-carriage to the left, it was when he popped his ribcage to the inside and slightly counterbent.  He also struggles to get the right shoulder around and do shoulder fore to the left, which I attribute to not being engaged enough in the left hind.

But he looks FANTASTIC right now, so there's that.  Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm.

The hardest thing is that he's like riding a gumby horse.  I was struck when I rode Paddy and Brego (the only other horses I've ridden lately) how novel it felt to have every foot go in the same, logical direction.  They just felt so solid.  Connor, millisecond by millisecond and footfall by footfall, sends his body parts in every direction - especially in these exercises lately.

I was telling my British teammate this tonight, who is also working on the same stuff with her Arabian, said, "You've got a pony, that's how riding a pony feels!  Get something bigger!  Although you do fit each other really well..."

Coming up to say hello as I pull up.

So I decided (on my own, then consulted trainer) that I am going to put him in partial training for the month of April.  I am waving the white adult ammie flag!  I have had her ride him from time to time, but never consistently before.  He needs someone with a better reaction time than I have to teach these concepts to him.  I can't give him what he needs here until he has a better understanding of it himself.

This is the definition of a plateau, and we need pushed over the edge.

As good of a trainer of people as she is, she's an even better horse trainer, so it's silly to bang my head against this wall over and over when she's so accessible and I (mostly) have the money to use her.  She'll both teach him what he needs to know, and get a more intimate knowledge of how he's going right now so she can use that to teach me.

Right now the thinking is that she'll ride twice a week and I'll ride in my lesson, with either another ride or a lunge also.

Here goes nothing!

It's brutally cold here right now, a low of 8 last night, and I spent all of yesterday thinking "Please don't cancel my lesson.  Please don't cancel my lesson," because it was my first lesson and first time jumping in the new saddle.  So when I got to the dark, quiet barn, I thought "Crap..." and texted my trainer to ask what was going on.

"We're still on, I canceled everyone's lesson but yours.  I figured you wanted to try out your new saddle. :)"

Teaching in 15 degree temps so I can try out my new saddle?  She is the best!  And I told her so.

"You want me to do what right now?"

It was supposed to be a jump lesson, but it quickly became a Dressage butt-kicking, which we needed so badly.  She's very good at adjusting on the fly when she sees something she doesn't like.  So, we spent the first few minutes insisting that he not go around with his nose in the air.  Next, we worked on a 20m circle, changing directions through the center of it, so we turned into the center at 3, 6, 9 and 12 on the clock, creating an X in the middle.

We had to do that for a while before he really settled in and got to work, but once he did, it was fantastic.  Once I had him on my aids, we got off that circle and started working on keeping him honest at whatever speed I set him at.

Still very surreal...

She had me use my leg to get him into a working trot, and then take the leg off, and to make sure that was a BIG difference in feel for him.  If he slowed down, apply leg until he was back where I wanted him.  She wants him to feel like he is free to move underneath me when he is maintaining the speed that I set him at - that he doesn't feel trapped by my leg.

We used that to establish our '3' trot, and then she called out which trot she wanted on a scale of 1-5, 1 being almost trotting in place (and we did get there for a stride or two multiple times!) and 5 being that deliciously massive Welsh Cob trot.  She said eventually he'll have a 1-10 trot.

It felt SO GOOD.  He was so on my aids, so consistent in the bridle even in the jump bit.  He was also more focused on me than he has been in a long time.  That level of focus - where he is so tuned in to me he ignores the whole outside world - goes hand-in-hand with being on my aids.  She said I need to give him a reason to focus on me with changes like the 1-5 trot, and not demand his focus.  I definitely need to change up my training rides.

This is on-my-aids-ultra-focused Connor.  Warming up literally right next to tent stabling, with 20 horses warming up around us, and he tunes the whole world out.  I need this mindset to be able to put in a good Dressage test.

Then we finished by popping a vertical a few times, a reward for the pony and a test for my saddle which was amazing but this post is long enough so that's going to have to wait.

Keeping warm

"When I got on him last week, he just felt unbendable.  We have to get him back to where he was, soft and between your leg and hand."  This was an incredible lesson.  Holy cow.