Cob Jockey

This guy...

The love of my life.

Normally I have the entire facility to myself for our Tuesday night rides, but recently we got a new boarder who also comes out on Tuesdays.  She's from Western Pleasure Land (it's a place) and is recently converting over to Dressage.  She was lunging her former WP horse in one end of the arena with lots of clucks.  Of course, hypersensitive Welsh Cob here reacted to each one like they were from me.  Made the first few minutes of the ride interesting.

I'm still feeling a little stuck on our own with Dressage, though not nearly as much as before.  Last night, I did a lot of leg yielding at the walk, focusing on opening up that left shoulder like we did in my lesson last week, and also 10m circles in the corner followed by a shallow serpentine down the long side.  I can feel when it all comes together for him, but I can't maintain it.

No lesson tomorrow (Happy Thanksgiving!), but we have a makeup one scheduled for Saturday.  I might go out early and clip him again before our lesson since it's supposed to be 60 degrees (!) and Connor with a half-regrown winter coat is going to act like he's moving through molasses if I don't.  I need some Magical Impulsion Dust, aka, clipped hair.

For everyone who has commented about caramels, we're going to do a test batch this weekend and they will be available next week!

Last night was awesome, and also probably paint-dryingly boring to anyone who isn't a Dressage nut.  Apologies in advance.

When we last left our heroes, their Dressage had gone all to crap and after sending up some signal flares and SOS calls to the trainer, we figured out he was piling all his weight onto his right shoulder in both directions, aka "not straight".

My rides since then have been workmanlike.  Nothing as good as last week's lesson, nothing near as bad as when we both forgot what straightness was, but we made progress, and she noticed and told me so.  "I can tell you've been working hard on this outside of lessons," is the biggest compliment ever.


Last night was 100% spent on a 20m circle (you're asleep already, aren't you?).  The first exercise was spiraling in and out to a cone at the center of it, right rein.  I had to move his shoulders out, turn his nose, and I had to do it like every two steps, which she earned her lesson fee by repeating overandoverandover.  But I can't just move him out from my inside leg, I also have to catch and hold him in my bad rein, the left one.

Next, same thing, but to the left, and because his problems are the same but totally different to the left (same = he piles on the right shoulder, different = that manifests itself differently to the left).  He kept trying to carry his haunches in and his shoulder out, so I had to focus on leading him with the inside (left) rein, getting that shoulder to really come through on the inside.

Synchronized chili vulturing on my lunch break.

To this direction, I really have to wait him out to get him to come into the bridle, but it was worth it.  It was the best he's gone in months, and we got the compliment, "Wow, that's some fancy trot, he's so free through the shoulders right now."  Bingo!

Christmas candy practicing, (husband made these, I roll and wrap).  This is why we should be friends.

Finally, we did it at the canter.  The right (always the worse direction) was motorcycleland (his favorite canter evasion) and she said he's got so much weight on the right shoulder, his left (outside) fore is actually almost crossing over it.  So she had me pick up the left rein when the left fore was just about to come off the ground, and take it up and over to encourage him to do the same with his foot.  It made a huge difference, and we ended up cooling out by working on that at the walk in the leg yield.

I ended by telling her I am enjoying Dressage bootcamp, and I am.  When 45 minutes makes that big of a difference in the way your horse moves, how could you not?

We had a Dressage lesson last night, because it's finally too dark for my 7pm lesson to be outside and my trainer is in denial that it's time to bring poles and standards in from the outdoor and the field.  This is 1) funny to me and 2) not a problem, because we could use a fancy prancing boot camp after all that jumping.

Connor moved stalls (happens all the time in our barn), and is now in the opposite corner.

The theme of last night was getting his outside shoulder unstuck, especially to the right.  He likes to pile all of his weight onto the inside shoulder, and then when I ask him to do things he's like "WHAT THAT'S NOT PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE"  Well, it would be, if you didn't have all of your 800lbs on one foreleg, horse!

To get this, we turned between the center and quarterline and did 3 steps of shoulder in, then three steps of leg yield, then 3 steps of shoulder in, then 3 steps of leg yield.  At the walk both directions, then trot.

One of the things she told me while standing in front of me in this exercise is that my right shoulder is always a little lower than the left, and to think about weighting my right seatbone and lengthening the right side of my body.  Every time I did that, he traveled more evenly.

Next we did basically the same thing, but with haunches in instead of shoulder in.  This time, especially to the right, the (pseudo) leg yield really focused on opening with the outside rein in order to get him to lead with his shoulder (aka transfer the weight to his left shoulder).  (Using the modified leg yield here as a means to an end, not practicing a proper leg yield for the sake of practicing a proper leg yield).

Once I got his shoulder unstuck, she told me to ride the outside hind toward his inside ear, and the combination of both those things made for a really big change in his way of going.  His weight shifted back and he became lighter and more consistent in the bridle.  I need to find THAT on my own.

We ended up with a few minutes of her calling out a different gait or lateral movement every couple of steps, and then throwing canter in that mix as well, and really trying to get canter to short trot and canter to walk.  Canter to walk is hard right now - feels like a pile of limbs and hooves rattling around underneath me - and right now there are several trot steps there too.  I can get fewer trot steps, but it's less balanced, so I decided to go for more trot steps and more balanced at this stage.  It's all a progression.

CLIPPERS (yay!) arrive tomorrow, and not a moment too soon:

So fuzzy.

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.

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!

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.