Cob Jockey

I had a lesson with NK a couple of weeks ago that I'm still struggling with.  It's a good struggle, because things are going to get hard and messy before we progress, but it's a struggle.

It turns out she's been going soft on me all these months, not wanting to interfere with my show season.  Really, I wish she had.  She's been holding out on me!  "I'm getting on him today," she said, matter-of-factly, as she came in while I was finishing my warmup.

All photos in this post by Paul Wood Photography from IDS Championships

She identified two major things:
1. He felt so heavy to her and was not in self-carriage/does not have the muscles to hold his shoulders up.  

That surprised me at first, and then as I thought about it, didn't surprise me at all.  He's SO much lighter now than he used to be, so it feels fine to me.  But I think I'm still micromanaging his body, manufacturing position instead of asking him to do it himself.  And it makes sense that he doesn't have the muscles to get his shoulders up, since shoulder freedom has been a problem for forever.

"He needs to be responsible for holding up his own head, okay?  You're allowed to give him as much rein as you want in the free walk, but when you pick the reins up, he needs to be ready to come with you."

2. He doesn't react when I put my leg on.

She really got after him about this.  "I scare him, okay, you don't scare him.  You put your leg on and he does nothing and you don't get after him, I get after him.  I'm fair to him, but I expect him to react."

After she got off of him, we worked on both.  For the self-carriage, she made sure not a step went by that he wasn't carrying his own head, getting after me to put my leg on and make an upward half-halt if he so much as thought about letting me carry him.


For the leg, she had me go on a circle, put my leg on and specifically make sure my knee was on him, ask for a lot of flexion with the inside rein (more than I'm used to for sure), and make sure he felt like he was moving out into my outside rein.  When he was doing it right, it felt like he got the weight off the left shoulder (going right).

Perfect example of what she's talking about, actually.

I understood what needs to happen and thought I understood how to make it happen in that lesson, but it's not translating under saddle for me.  We need more engagement, and more accountability for Connor, but in practice that's not easy without reverting to my bad old position and habits.  Also not helping was two straight weeks of travel with a third coming up this coming week.


But regardless, I have to admit I don't have the feel developed to really understand what needs to happen.  I can see it all day long, but I can't feel it.  What I really need are more lessons with her to help me understand these concepts better, but that's not going to happen for a while unfortunately. 

I only ended up riding for about five minutes in last night's lesson, but Connor ended up getting more accomplished without me than he could have with me.

Let me explain.

The windswept look he gave me when I pulled up.

All of the horses were nuts yesterday (warm weather, tornadic storms blowing later) and Connor was no exception.  His answer to everything I asked in my warmup was an emphatic "NO THANK YOU."  He was looking for excuses and trying to shoot out from under me.

My trainer saw this and said we should try something related, but very different from what we've been doing lately.  It was another Jean Luc Cornille exercise, this time a lunging exercise.

She ran the line through the inside bit ring, and instead of running it over his head, she ran it back to the saddle where she had attached a grab strap to the D rings.  She ran it under the strap, then back over, down the other side and clipped it on the outside bit ring.

She explained that this mimicked the feel of the riders hands more closely, and that this exercise is all about letting him find his balance.

Instead of the usual 20m circle, she made a square using half of the large outdoor arena, with approximately a 12-15m circle in each corner of the square.  In the beginning, there were also circles in the middle of the "long" side so that he didn't lose his balance when he didn't really have it yet.  Toward the end, we could actually get four circles instead of 6.

(To the right) She held the line exactly like you'd hold the reins in your right hand, with a loop in the line, and held the lunge whip in her left hand.  Because his prerogative was racing forward as fast as possible at the moment, she actually crossed her arms with the lunge whip under the line and the whip in front of him.

"I like this exercise because it gets them thinking and engaged, and doesn't just wear them out.  It's not lunging for the sake of lunging."

It was so interesting.  In the beginning, Connor looked like a scale, with the platform on the front of his body lower than the platform on the back.  He was going fast and somewhat braced and looking.

What Connor looked like to the right in the beginning (lower platform is his forelegs).

Gradually, (she really waited him out) he began working over his back and the scale became more even, back to front.  When that happened, his forefeet also took slower steps, and he licked and chewed the bit down.  Because I was on the ground, I could see this all very clearly.

Some things I noticed:
- Even on the lunge, he bends better to the right than the left.
- Even on the lunge, he would get it for a few steps, then throw his head up or move his body in some other intentional way in order to move differently.
- But after about 30 minutes of this (walk and trot), he started staying in the balanced/back lifted position and not losing it.  So maybe I need to wait that out too.

She turned him over to me 3/4 of the way through so she could guide me through learning how to do the exercise.  I really had to walk fast in between the circles to move down the straight side of the square, but not so fast as to startle him.  He did offer canter for both her and me a couple of times, which she did not intend to do with him today, but it was so lovely and balanced she let him go.

By the end, he'd trotted and cantered in self-carriage in a very consistent cadence for a long time with no signs of being taxed physically.  "He's really in better shape than I give him credit for," she said.  "Or he's playing me under saddle..."  We laughed.

Sweaty pony

I'm interested to see where this takes us.

Connor and I had a good ride on Saturday, and an interesting one on Sunday.

Springtime at the barn.

We are continuing to implement the suggestion from my trainer which is not to let him get on his forehand from the very beginning.  On Saturday, to the left, I did a turn on the forehand any time I felt his left hind stop reaching under.  Maybe that's not the right thing to do, but it's what's in my toolbox, and it worked, even if we were doing a lot of them in the beginning.  It was a good ride and good work from him.

Hairy eyeball firmly in play

On Sunday, we did more of the same, but in the outdoor, and Connor threw a fit for no reason at all.  He was rushing, tuning me out, and getting more angry the more I directly tried to do about it.

I was about to write off the ride when I remembered that some of my best lessons have started with Connor fits, and my trainer has helped me work through them in the past, so I decided to stick it out and consciously not fight him back. We did a figure 8 against the fence of ~8m circles, trying to use a lot of seat and very little hand.  The fence was essential because it helped me slow him down.


Within a couple of minutes, he relaxed through his entire body, slowed down, lowered his head and started licking and chewing, like he completely forgot whatever he was mad about.  It was awesome, and useful.

I rode for quite a while after that, now that I had a brain to work with, and was strongly reminded that she's advised me to "be persistent and keep trying, even if it seems like he's not getting it", because I rode longer than usual and he was doing really well in the impulsion and self-carriage departments toward the end.  And once I had it, I played with it for a while, doing leg yields back and forth.


Things are going better, but I am still looking forward to the refinement those trainer rides will bring.

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!

Midwestern spring.

I'm not ready to attribute all of this to the Micklem, but, quote, "You guys have really turned a corner in the last two weeks!  He's really starting to carry himself, you look great."

Front lawn of the farm, with a pasture in which an XC lesson is going on in the background.

Post -ride grazing/cooldown.  A happy pony!