Cob Jockey

I was sitting in the rocking chairs on my barn's porch with CGP last Saturday, drinking wine and listening to the steady drum of rain on the roof and thunder in the distance. She was staying at my house all weekend to coach people at a local show, and we had just started an in-person lesson, her first visit to my barn ever, when a tornadic thunderstorm blew through. So the only logical thing to do was to put Connor back in his stall, grab a glass of wine and enjoy the storm.

Same view, different day this week. It's storm season.

It was safe enough to restart the lesson, but it was obvious that neither of us wanted to break the spell of alcohol, conversation and relaxation that had fallen over us. I said, "You know, I think I'd rather just sit here and drink wine with you than do that lesson," and she said, "This is the most relaxing afternoon I've had in years, no kidding, and I was thinking the same thing. I never get to just sit and talk like this, and don't have a porch like this to watch storms from. This is amazing."

We watched the rain in silence for a while before I said, "I'm just not that motivated to train or show right now, and I'm really not fussed about it at all," I confessed. "Third doesn't come easily to either one of us, and I have [a lot going on in my personal life] to deal with. It's all I can do to ride a couple of times a week, and I'm okay with that, I'm not beating myself up over it."

Staring into the ravine on our property on a hack

She said, "You know, that's okay, I think that's very smart. There's nothing wrong with taking a step back and enjoying your horse. You're still learning and progressing, there's more to all of this than medals and scores."

She went on to talk about when she went through a similar period of time with her first GP horse, about times she's had to have tough conversations with students about putting the horse first when they were chasing a big show goal, about what it was like balancing horses and her previous non-horsey career. It was the deepest and most soul-baring conversation I've ever had with her, and it was incredible. It was validating and honest and mattered so much to hear that from her.

Bareback toodling is training, right?

And then the following Tuesday in my virtual lesson, she asked me to move him laterally in both directions at the canter, and HE GAVE ME AN EFFORTLESS CANTER HALF PASS, which I have never ridden before in my life. I actually stopped him and was like holy shit holy shit WHAT WAS THAT! I'm not sure any lateral work has ever felt that effortless, let alone a movement I've never ridden before.

It was all such a good reminder that there's nothing wrong with slowing down and listening to your horse, that slow is fast with horses, and that sometimes a good conversation over a glass of wine in the rain matters more than pushing forward with training for the sake of it.

Life is good.

No filter - the Midwest is just gorgeous sometimes

You may have noticed I haven't written about riding lately. Part of that is because I've only been riding 2-3x a week for a while now. Many reasons - some which are motivation related, some of which are related to my husband, who still can't stay awake past the time we used to eat dinner before the seizure. Sort of puts a damper on being at the barn late.

Part of it though is that I'm working through some things that I'm not sure I fully understand yet, definitely not well enough to write about them.

I know a couple of things to be true. One, he REALLY likes this saddle. And thank goodness for that, am I right? Haha.

He's going with no resistance whatsoever, to anything, and is so willing to lift his back in it. For the first time in a Dressage saddle, I find myself not even thinking about the effect the saddle has on him, and that feels amazing.

The other is that the musculature on either side of his neck and either side of his thoracic sling is wildly imbalanced. You can feel it, you can palpate the muscles on both sides and feel how much different they are.

Spying on me as I put my boots on

Like seemingly half of the blogosphere, I had a 1:1 with Celeste about six weeks ago. I still don't have enough of a fully formed thought about it to write a post about it, but it was interesting. I can't say I've been as consistent as I should've been with the homework, but even still, he's made a lot of progress in releasing his underneck since that lesson (he, um, would NOT even lower his head a little during that lesson. It was wild to realize how afraid he is of balancing, even standing still while on the ground, without using his underneck). 

 I haven't ridden enough to really develop any new muscle and yet the shape of his neck has changed so much, people reached out to me to ask what I was doing after seeing this photo on Instagram:

So I'm trying to ride with a lot of feel. Do the reins feel even? Can I move both forelegs away from his body? Are both hind legs active? Am I sitting evenly?

You can imagine this is not a recipe for getting changes in time for show season, but I'm okay with that. This feels so much more important, given that his head shaking continues, but in ways that I know are tied to his muscular imbalances.

So that's where we are. More questions than answers, but we keep on keeping on nonetheless!

At the time of my lesson on Black Friday, I hadn't had a lesson in over three weeks. Between her schedule and my slightly-less-flexible new job, it's been harder this year to get lessons in than it was last year.

But you know what? I actually think that's been a good thing. I had back-to-back lessons on Friday/Saturday last weekend, and they both left me with my jaw on the floor in the best of ways. He feels a lot more confirmed to her way of riding than he ever has before, which means it's easier for me to get on and feel the right way to do things.

Not me, but wow I've never seen this out of him before!

On Friday, she asked to get on him first and show me what she'd been working on. Even from the ground I could see that his balance was different and there was an intensity (but not tension, unless she was actively pushing his buttons to get a point across) to his work that hadn't been there before. 

You'll notice I was forced to clip him between Friday's ride (when he took two hours to cool out, yes I just clipped him five weeks ago) and Saturday's ride. I did an entire (shitty) full clip in 30 minutes before my lesson, desperately wanting to get the hair off to avoid a repeat of the day before, and then had to clean him up after!

I could see very clearly the building blocks of flying changes that she was laying. For example, in the upward canter transition, his default is to initiate the movement with the front legs and leave the hind legs as an afterthought for a stride or two later.

His default:

Slow off the ground and slow to the aid

What needs to become his default:

I picked this effort because he did it a little bit "extra" so you can really see the difference. Those two canter transitions above occurred just a couple of minutes apart!

Regardless of what the transition looks like, the canter quality is just incredible, especially for the horse that started his riding career as the "King of the Tranter". I overheard CGP telling a student that was watching my lessons that he continually surprises her by how well he's able to sit. She keeps asking for more sit, and he keeps delivering.

She is also working on the changes from time to time, and says "They're there, and they're easy for him," but that at this point they will come and go until the canter quality is more consistent. I expect it will be a long while before I actually ride one, and I'm totally okay with that.

When I got on after her, the difference I felt were enormous, the biggest ride-to-ride change I'd felt on him since that first week I dropped him off in 2020. He follows the bit with no hesitation and no blockages anywhere in his neck. The top of his neck is longer than the bottom - no more underneck leverage! And I felt him reach for my lats in a way that immediately taught me what correct contact should be like and could have just died right there. My horse knows more than me!

We had one moment when the canter got a bit splatty, and she told me just to find my lats and not give my elbows away, AND HE SAT AND COLLECTED THE CANTER RIGHT THERE. Normally once the canter gets crappy, it's just crappy until I bring him back down, so that felt like a miracle.

Balance

The other big change I noticed is that when I close my legs now, he gets quicker behind rather than just speeding up and splatting forward. There was actually a moment where I was heading into my second trot half pass (ever, I've never done it before) on Friday and I recognized I needed more impulsion but not more speed, and I closed my legs in the corner and I felt him step under and get quicker with the hind feet. IT. WAS. AMAZING.

The right amount of impulsion feels borderline too much at all times, like there's a ton of potential energy there. It doesn't feel polite and slow, it feels energetic and barely contained even when it doesn't look like he's moving fast.

It's not like he's suddenly easy to ride though. The contact thing in particular, I have a lot of work to do to internalize that solid-but-alive feeling that's there now, and that's the thing I most have to not break. 

Me: determined to pull on the inside rein 4eva

So it's interesting, because last weekend was the first time that Third Level ever felt possible at all. In the context of a First/Second Level balance and way of going, half pass and flying changes and all that sound like unattainable rocket science. But the balance I felt, the control, the reaction to my half halts, the on-demand quickness from behind, NOW Third really feels possible.

But at the same time, it feels further away than ever, because now that I've felt it, I know that all of that has to be our confirmed, default way of going before we're ready to show it. And I LOVE that. I was grinning like a little kid in my lessons, feeling things I'd never felt before. That moment when I closed my legs and got more impulsion for the first time ever meant more to me than a Bronze Medal ever could. So I'm stoked to continue this journey no matter how long it takes to actually get into the show ring again.

The actual best boy <3 So proud of you.

It's been a couple of weeks since I had a lesson, first because Pivo didn't play ball, and then because GP trainer had to cancel due to being at a show. I really don't mind this though, because between a break from lessons and show season "ending", it's given me a chance to take a step back and focus on my own biomechanics.

And I've come to a couple of interesting realizations, the biggest of which being that my pelvis is STILL crooked in the way my PT friend helped me discover last summer.

I'm just on the buckle here, having just got on, but in this moment I'm intentionally thinking "fall off the right side of the horse", and in reviewing the footage I discovered I was actually centered...oh no...lol

At Waterloo, in the warmup, I discovered if I put the right side of my body forward, he suddenly raised his back and went really well, but I don't think it was really my right side at all. I think when I did that, it made me focus on my torso to the point that my hips leveled off, and THAT'S what he responded well to. I mean:

I still feel like I'm falling off to the right here, lol, I cannot even tell you how crooked this feels to me!

You might be asking why my GP trainer hasn't caught this, but I think it's a very difficult thing to see because this is not a "the way I'm sitting in the saddle thing", it's a true asymmetry that impacts every aspect of my life (sitting, standing, CrossFit, Pilates, everything), and my torso compensates for it. I can have a lot of weight in the left seatbone, the right one floating in space above the center of the saddle and the bulk of my torso over my right/floating hip, which places my center of gravity, well, relatively centered, even if it feels awful to the horse.

Not going for a tiny pirouette here

As I explore this, I've completely taken out all of the Second Level movements and any expectation of collection temporarily, and have stuck to big figures and long leg yields in basically a First Level frame, and Connor has responded so well. To feel him lift his back and reach for the bit without seemingly any effort on my part is so cool.

I'm also working hard on transforming my contact after GP trainer pointed something out to me in Chicago, but that's a post for another day.

The hard part about this is that he REALLY wants to tip me into my old position. Stride by stride, I have to constantly fight it. There's this specific movement he does from the left hind to the right shoulder that gets me every time, and that's the kind of thing that I have to be policing for myself. It's also the kind of thing that's hard to actively pay attention to when I'm learning movements and other things I've never done before in lessons, which is why it's so great to have a brief break from lessons like this every so often.

It may seem like a step back to just be working on First Level stuff right now, but it's all the more important to fix stuff like this now, because I doubt I can do good flying changes with one hip stuck up into the air all the time!

With Lamplight over, my 2021 rated season has come to a close. Unless someone comes out of the woodwork with scores that haven't been submitted from before 8/31 yet, we'll be the Second Level WPCSA Sec D All-Breeds champions for 2021:

I know there are better Second Level Section D's out there than Connor, but we put the time, money and effort in to get the 8 60%+ scores across four rated shows/judges, so that does count for something. And as always, I'm thrilled to get to promote the Castleberry name outside the Welsh world, which is always my ulterior motive for things like year-end awards.

Connor doesn't need year end awards, all he needs out of horse shows is divesting the ladies from their treats

With that, our time showing rated Second has come to an end. There's nothing more I want to achieve at that level, so from here, we won't show rated again until 3-1 is ready. Which will hopefully be next spring, but who knows? I'm not in a hurry.

We'll still show Second one last time at our GMO's schooling show championships and ride-offs the last weekend of September, because I qualified for it and it's 30 minutes from home, and they give out dope ribbons with tassels, so why not? 

Dope ribbons with tassels

GP trainer recommended I spend the rest of September working on the test movements that I can pick up points in at ride-offs, then giving him a week completely off at the beginning of October, followed by a light week the second week of October. That following weekend will be the Welsh show, and then the Monday after that, he goes to GP trainer's for Third Level Boot Camp for two months.

His pink Two Horse Tack halter is so manly <3

It's a bit strange then to think that this month is my last month getting to school Dressage regularly until January!

On Friday I went over and picked up my best boy.

I was supposed to have a lesson but spaced it on the start time, and ended up asking if I could use my lesson time to chat with CGP instead. I don't mind paying her for her time to talk shop with me and answer my questions, I think that's a very valid use of my money and shows respect for her time and opinions as a professional that I don't think she should just teach me for free, even if the teaching doesn't occur while I'm on a horse.

Connor's buddy Hector was v excited that Connor came home

Some notable thoughts from her, paraphrased:

• One of the reasons she's so excited about where he's at right now is that he stays where she puts him. She asks for a collected canter, he stays in collected canter without picking at him every stride. "We can start to do a lot now."
  
• She absolutely thinks skipping Regionals to start working on Third is the right choice. Without saying it like this, she intimated that we wouldn't be super competitive at Regionals/Finals anyway, and it makes a lot more sense to consider Pony Cup the highlight of this particular season and then start work on Third after Lamplight.
  
• On entering shows: "Definitely roughly one show per month and one test per day for him, he's going to get stronger as he goes up the levels but stamina will probably always be an issue."
• On giving him time off just before he goes to her this fall: "I've found that two weeks off doesn't necessarily give more benefit than one. You might do one week off completely and then one week of just hacking and trail riding."
• On creating a weekly schedule for a Dressage horse with stamina issues: She likes a 5 day a week schedule with Monday and Friday off. She told me if I'm trying to preserve his stamina (like the week before a show) I might consider keeping the rides short and focusing on one thing, like making one day all about the trot but keeping the ride to 20-25 minutes and avoiding some of the tougher lateral work.
• On sending Connor over for training: she's happy to take him for long periods of time too, but it was so productive for her to have him for a week or two (I 1000% agree) that we should consider doing it every so often. He saw his favorite bodyworker twice and CGP totally transformed the contact in just a few rides, then solidified it even more the second week. That's worth the price of admission to me. Plus it gets me out of doing stalls - eyyyyyy.
  

Starting to get some real foreleg extension on the mediums these days!

Afterwards, I took advantage of her empty full court to run through 2-3 by myself, and guys, he felt f***** amazing. I can't even put into words how good it feels to have him come out and just be THERE in the bridle for me. And for him to get pissed off when I pull on him now. You tell me, little buddy!

I thought for a moment that I totally broke the simple changes until I practiced them in the haunches-in-on-a-10m-circle canter from last weekend's lesson, and then, oh, they were right there. It's probably less that I actually need his haunches in, and more that I need my outside leg to be, you know, doing something to prevent him from swinging his haunches out so he can unload the inside hind. #ridingishard

I had the whole long weekend to think about that ride on Saturday. How much progress he made with her in three rides now that she's actually improving things on him and not just fixing broken things. What she said about installing changes vs my show season. I also had a couple days to process her Sunday ride, which she sent me a video of.

She did the same TOH/10m (or smaller) canter in HI/walk/TOH exercise on Sunday that I did Saturday, only better. There were some moments in which you could REALLY see a canter pirouette canter starting to form.

And after a chat with JenJ about my show goals, I find myself making the same decision I did a year ago this month: to send Connor for full training later this fall again. Only this time, the goals are completely different. And I won't send him for quite as long.

She sends me crosstie pics <3

Last year my goals for fall full training were "give him a more educated understanding of the contact" and "fix the simple changes" and a secret hidden unspoken goal that maybe he'd ride a flying change once. Check, check and check.

This time, the goal is "install flying changes." Period. I know she'll work on more than just that over 2.5 months, but changes are the goal. I've watched enough people deal with the frustratingly low scores that come from bad changes/late changes/inconsistent changes to know that it's worth my money to have her get them solid for me. And clearly, she's effective with him!

Shame that board is in the way, but still, damn. She's such a trooper to be doing this in a way-too-small-for-her jump saddle too!

GP trainer says "it's perfect timing". It is, in a lot of ways. He's fit enough for them, he's 15 and still requires no maintenance even with the work getting much harder this year (knock on wood so hard!), and the building blocks needed are all there.

It's also perfect timing for baby Disco, who will be coming home around the time I send Connor off, so this will give me 2.5 months with him as my only horse at home.

Getting taller by the day!

 I can give him the time and attention he needs to get settled in properly, and I can also bring him with me sometimes on the weekends when I make the 4 hour round-trip drive to take a lesson on Connor. You know, just to spend time on the trailer, go somewhere new, and be bored in a different looking stall.

I think this plan might work!

I'm not sure what I expected from Connor being with my GP trainer for 6 days and 3 rides before I got on on Saturday morning, but I definitely didn't expect her to totally transform him.

Excuse me, is this mine? I don't recognize it.

From the moment I got on, even before I picked the reins up, I could tell she'd been on him. When she's been on him, even when we're walking on the buckle in the beginning, every little movement the bit makes means something to him, and he tries to follow it.

Next, I noticed that the contact felt completely transformed and so solid. He was reaching down into the bit with every step no matter how I rode:

Practicing for our HUS debut

She walked over after my warm-up and could not stop gushing about how good he feels. "If you didn't have a big show coming up, we would be working on flying changes hard right now, the canter is ready for it," she said.

I'm not even sure what movement this random screen grab is from, we definitely didn't school half steps or super collected trot yesterday, and yet...

We started out by working on the turns on the haunches, which is an easy place for us to score more points. She explained that he still wants to walk forward with the inside hind rather than weighting it like he should be, and she explained in great detail that my inside leg has to be asking that inside hind to step up and down in place, higher, rather than forward.

When I did it right, it involved a lot more body parts (of mine) than I had been using in the past. Every step required inside leg to outside rein applied at just the right moments with a guarding outside leg. This is something I am going to practice a lot in the days leading up to Pony Cup, because doing it right is certainly not automatic for me yet.

Once those were passable, we did an exercise that was 

1. TOH
2. 10m canter circle in haunches-in 
3. Canter-walk straight into another TOH 

And in the middle of that exercise she yelled, "THERE'S your collected canter!" It felt amazing.

She said I might think he was going to break in it because it was more collected than anything I'd ever ridden before, and I said surprisingly I didn't feel that way. It felt powerful and light and like it wasn't a struggle for him.

...okay...

And then she told me to get the bend solid, sit to the inside and apply some outside aids (massively paraphrased)

...okay...

And then she said surprise, you're doing a canter half pass!

Was it amazing quality or steep enough, no, but it was my first time riding the movement, and I love the way she just snuck it up casually on me without giving me a heads up. Unfortunately the Pivo was in a horrible spot to capture lackluster half passes (lol), but I had to take a GIF anyway, for posterity.

Baaaaaarely moving to the inside, but we're doing it, lol. Gotta start somewhere!

We ended the lesson by drilling SI and HI on the rail, more for my benefit than his. She talked about how consistency of shape is important to the scoring and how I needed to get the correct angle and keep it. To the right we were a lot more successful than the left, in part because I'm sure I'm sitting crooked in some way to the left, but we ran out of time to figure it out in the lesson.

That trot tho

He's staying with her the rest of this week before I pick him up on Friday, then he'll have six days at home before we leave for NDPC on the following Thursday!