Cob Jockey

My crazy work schedule meant a missed lesson this week, which we made up on Sunday.  In daylight.  In the open field across the street.  HALLELUJAH!

Moment of brutal honesty: I didn't even attempt to clean the leg he puts on the ground in order to eat grass under the fence in turnout.  It was a muddy trainwreck.

My trainer asked if I wanted to borrow Louie's saddle (big drafty paint X guy, we've borrowed it in the past) and also ride in my jump bridle to change things up a little.  I am so glad I said yes, because if I hadn't, I probably would have been a lawn dart.  Connor was hyper.  I asked for the canter in warmup and got a squeal.  A squeal!  A quiet little pony sized squeal.  What does he think he is, a racehorse?!

It's an event saddle made in England, and is definitely the most British piece of tack I've ever seen.

We got to work with my trainer, and in the first five minutes, Connor completely lost his shit over the following things occurring more or less simultaneously:
- Neighbor kid playing basketball about 400m away
- Bare patch of dirt in the grass
- Shadow of jump standard being cast on the ground (to be fair, it was the first sunny day in three weeks here.  He probably forgot what shadows are).

He jumped in the air, threw his head in my lap and scrambled backwards/sideways, and then got even more scared by his own spooking.  Oh boy.  So we started at the walk, and ended up having an extremely productive lesson, surprisingly.

"What, me, scare myself spooking?  Doesn't sound likely."

One of the biggest things we've learned recently is that I hold too much with the outside rein in both directions, so he can't lengthen the outside of his body to move it around the inside.  When I think about a soft outside elbow with my outside hand a bit forward, he's able to bend a lot better.

Today's lesson was a lot about doing the following things on a circle:
1) encourage him to lengthen the outside of his body with a soft outside elbow and an outside half halt, then
2) encourage him to bend around my inside leg, using my inside rein to guide him, making sure that my hips are straight but my shoulders are bending, to put him in shoulder fore on the circle

She had me focus on one point per quarter of the circle to plan ahead for his bend, so that it was more consistent.  The result was that he was soft and bendy in both directions, including the left, although it was harder that direction.




At the end she asked me if I had any questions.  I did.  "Is it okay to like riding him better in a bit with more leverage than the snaffle?  I feel like I am a bad person for preferring the way he goes in the elevator, but it's like I have to whisper when he's wearing it, and I have to shout in the loose ring."

She said, no, it's fine, and she actually wants me to ride in the elevator for a little while because we're retraining both my and his sense of feel.  He likes to lay on my hands (and when he does over terrain, he trips) and this is a tool to help us not do that.  I rode with very little contact today, and she said he looked better than she'd seen in months.

All in all, a really productive lesson.  Way to channel that excess energy into good work, little buddy.

Contest results at the bottom, but first, an amazing lesson!

I asked not to ride T in my lesson last night because I felt that I'd figured some things out enough after riding T to productively ride Connor, and it turns out that was the right decision.  In fact, it was such a dramatic turnaround from our last lesson that my trainer could hardly believe it.

"This changes everything!" she said, and she is not generally a dramatic person.  And later on, "This is the best he's ever looked!"

This post filled with pictures I never shared from FRVPCHT Dressage in June.

We started out focusing on walk-halt transitions from my seat with my forearms "not doing anything" and feeling as though I had "two shopping bags on the crook of each elbow, trying to keep them from sliding down but not using my forearms to hold them there."  If she saw muscle lines appear on my forearm, she got after me.  It led to soft soft soft following hands.

I think we were on a circle here, my upper body isn't turning at all though.  Another problem of mine.

That, she said, should be the exercise I go back to when the wheels start to come off.  It really helped me ride back to front and got him listening to my seat.  We both need a lot of that.

Next, we picked up the trot, and I really figured something new out here.  We've had issues with right bend, well, she had me continue using my newly soft arms and with him carrying his head lower, she had me lower my hands to keep in line with the bit.  When we were on a 20m circle to the right, I both lowered my left (outside) hand far lower than I normally carry it and shifted my weight from the inside stirrup to the outside stirrup at the same time.

What if there's no outside rein for him to come into here?  What if all of my weight is on the inside foot?  I think that's what was happening.

Instantly, I had awesome right bend.  What?  I tried it again. Same thing.

DRESSAGE IS AWESOME.

Derpy agrees.

Connor was soft and melty and paying such close attention to my seat.  He was consistent in the bridle and not trying to dive down at all.  It was so harmonious, which is especially amazing considering how difficult and combative the last few lessons had been.  "You really got a lot out of riding T," she said.  Who knew 30 minutes at the walk could have such an effect?

I know by now that these breakthroughs in one area are followed by working on something else, which presents the opportunity to forget this, so I'm going to work really hard to internalize this.  Feels good to get somewhere!

Going places, doing stuff.

And now, the 100 followers contest results!  Really, you are all winners, because I'm going to share the Adam's Labor Day Sale coupon code, good for 15% off your entire order.  This is how I got my blanket last year:


And I also will have a promotional code coming sometime soon from EquiFit ShouldersBack, if you're planning on purchasing one of those.  I'll post it when I have it.

And now, the big winner is...

Alli of Ponytude!  Congratulations, Alli!  I'll get with you via email for your prize!

Heroes reference, anyone?

Beautiful morning for a ride.

The two big things that Nancy pointed out and then helped fix on Monday were my bracing with the right leg, and his outside shoulder popping out constantly.  Fixing those two things led to some great work out of Connor, and Nancy was truly impressed with the progress we've made.  "Well yeah, you should be leading by 10 points after Starter Dressage with work like that!" (referencing GDHT) were her exact words.  Felt good to get that kind of validation!

After watching that ride, my trainer gave me much the same lesson today, but over fences, and I learned that I've had too much inside bend especially on gymnastic lines.  Inside bend + popped shoulder = crooked horse over fences.  Opening the inside rein and keeping him stick-straight in the outside rein while keeping my inside leg on around the corner led to a feeling over fences I have not gotten with him before: that he wasn't going to get "stuck".  I always feel like I have to cowboy up the last couple of strides or he'll break, but it turns out a lot of that was due to the way I was riding him, not the way he actually goes.

The pretty princess taking his pre-ride pee with one leg way out to the side.

It's hard for him to bring that inside hind through when he's working properly, so he likes to avoid that by traveling with his shoulder to the outside.  I had to pay attention to it every stride, because if I let up for a second, he would pop it out.  It's subtle, but correcting it made a big difference in the way he went.  Inside leg there for him to bend around, half-halts on the outside rein.

Interestingly, getting the outside shoulder like that snapped him out of his usual second-half slump, where we lose the lightness we had the in the first half of the lesson after a break, so I wonder if maybe he's tired of working properly by then, and has been taking advantage of me by throwing his shoulder around in the second half.  Some of it is still conditioning, but it's something to think about.

More training braids. He's sexy and he knows it.

Baby also took out his first fence today, haha.  Growing up so quickly!  I gave him a good ride and he made what my trainer called a "green horse judgment error" at the first element of a 2 element gymnastic and didn't snap his front end up in time to clear it, so we went through it.  I made him jump the second element anyway and his ears were swiveling back and forth as he tried to figure out why the pole was chasing us.  The good boy learned from his mistake, though, and was tight and careful the next time we went to it!

• I am completely giving away the outside rein, especially to the left.  Elbow goes forward, contact is dropped, and my hand goes up.  When I take the outside rein back, he softens.
• In both directions, he engages the inside hind so much more, especially on small circles, when I am not sitting on it.  Duh, Jen.  To the left especially, when I remembered to sit on both seatbones evenly and not clamp on with my inflexible left leg, he used the inside hind so well, my trainer was cheering us on almost.

Whoa.  I think I just figured something out.

I was riding Connor this afternoon, still working on his bending and stiffness issues and correcting the problems my trainer pointed out in my last lesson.  I'd been working for a half-hour or so and was on the right rein (to which he usually goes around with his nose to the left and his inside shoulder to the inside) doing a square with turns on the haunches around the corners.  In this, I'm really focused on having him in the outside (left) rein.  In the exercise, I realized that my right calf wasn't really on him, but my leg calf was very much on him, so I put my right calf on him like I meant it.

The result?  Instant straightness and reaching for the bridle.  Like, dramatic turnaround.

Hacking

To experiment, I put my leg back where I had it before, barely touching him, and he went hard on the left rein and his ribcage went right.  Leg on, straightness and reaching.  Leg off, all crooked.  The effect was reproduced every single time.

I think I've been causing my own problems.

From there on out, I got some amazing work out of him, then called it a day and cooled him out in the field across the street.  We both had a lot to process.

Once again, learning to ride properly proves to be another inside-leg-to-outside-rein epiphany, but this one is especially effective.

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.

The best instructors can come in with a game plan, but also have the ability to change that game plan on the fly if they identify a different, more pressing need.  That was the case yesterday, when my trainer came in talking about a canter transition-heavy lesson with jumping at the end, but ended up working us through some bending issues that are very obviously my fault.

One of the things on which Nancy spent a lot of time with me last week was bending.  “Does your left bicep hurt after lessons?”  I answered that it did, and she told me I was just holding him up with that left rein.  To the right, it wasn’t as noticeable, because he’s supposed to be in that rein, but to the left, he’s going back to being hard to turn and not in my outside rein at all.  My trainer thinks that as he’s done that more, I’ve compensated by going harder on the inside (left) rein, and now it’s just an ingrained habit that needs to be unlearned.

So we ended up having a remedial bending lesson last night, in which she nailed me every time I lost feel in the outside rein, had me do lots of changes of direction, and told me that I need to give forward/reconnect instead of take back/release on the left rein.  “His only chance to respond and improve is in the absence of pressure,” she said.  I was told to reach forward and scratch his wither every three strides in an attempt to deprogram that left arm, and to make sure that my left hand didn’t go behind the pommel of my saddle. 

It was such a frustrating lesson because we just had to keep going until I got the feel and he got the message, and I was really struggling in the middle of it.  We almost crashed into the jumps once or twice because I had no outside rein and no steering.  Slowly but surely, we improved – at the expense, sometimes, of having the inside bend, but I was told that it’s more important to get myself right first right now, and I agree.  I’m the pilot and he’s the plane, after all, I need to have control over my own body before I can fly his.  It took longer than I maybe would have given it on my own, and then we lost it again when we took a brief walk break, so that’s something to think about as I go into my weekend homework rides.

Next week I might be put on a mature horse in order to redevelop that feeling on something that isn’t catering to my habit.  It’ll be the first time I’ve ridden anything but Connor in nearly a year, so that should be interesting.

"...what?"

Whew.  It's been a while since Distracted Pony has made an appearance, but that was certainly the case today.  R, owner of the only stallion on the property (and a very nice one at that), was riding at the same time I was today, (There was more than one person at my barn at a time on a non-lesson day, amazing, right?) so I took the indoor, and the big doors were open at both ends to let the breeze in.  I've never ridden Connor in there with both sets of doors open, and it was an open invitation for him to be very looky and distracted.

Post-ride today.  Looking gooooooooooooood.

Because he was so distracted and I haven't talked to my trainer since his last two trainer rides, I kept it simple and non-stressful with lots of walking exercises at the non-scary part of the arena.  I purposely tap-tapped him with the stick when he needed it, and although he did shoot forward every time, it was really amazing how much that extra impulsion lightened him in the bridle and got him on the bit rather than behind it.

One thing I really focused on was keeping him between my aids during turns/circles.  When we started getting all that ostrich trot again in April, I focused heavily on the outside rein to remedy that.  Now that I've done that and been riding with so much outside rein, I've forgotten all about the inside aids during turns, which leads to him turning like a 2x4.  Since he's so sensitive to my aids, it's not hard to fix, but it does require that I ride astutely and with a lot of body awareness (both my body and his body).  Just like my former perching-forward habit that has now turned into a leaning-back habit, I feel like learning to ride properly has been a series of focusing on one thing, over-emphasizing it, and then dialing it back.