Cob Jockey

While doing groundwork with Disco the other night, I was struck by how different my perception of him is today vs what it would have been five years ago. Before Kate's hippie Dressage and after Kate's hippie Dressage.

 

Disco is a slow twitch kind of guy. I have never seen him spook, never seen him make a quick cut sideways. Nothing intimidates him, and it feels like it takes things a while to get from his brain to his feet.

Finally getting somewhere with ground tying. By the way, we were under a Wind Advisory for 40+mph gusts at the time, and the indoor sounded like it was going to blow apart. Good pony.

 

I, on the other hand, am fast twitch. I do everything fast. I grew up running fast. I used to get in trouble for doing my school work too fast. I have spent the last decade being told to slow certain movements down in order to go faster and lift more weight in CrossFit. Connor is fast twitch, and so are my dogs, who feel joined at the fast twitch brain to me (well...one of them does).

The slowest of all the slow twitch brains, and we love him for it.

On the one hand, sometimes I wonder if this makes Disco and I incompatible. On the other hand, Kate has given me the tools, thought processes and introspection needed to see him for what he is and meet him where he is. To develop sensitivity and reactivity instead of diminish them.

Take backing in hand, for instance. Kate teaches that you need to give the horse four seconds between picking up the knot underneath their halter to where you start to apply a feather light pressure on the bridge of the nose, because that's how long it takes the brain to process that new stimulus.

 

Flicking his ears back and forth between paying attention to me for his next cue as we did groundwork at the mounting block, and to the sounds of PM chores and dog chaos in the barn aisle

Fast twitch me wants him to back the second I think I want him to back, the same joined-at-the-brain feeling I get from Meatloaf and from Connor. Is it not disobedience if he doesn't? Is it not training the wrong thing if I don't expect an immediate response? I often apply too much pressure too quickly as a result, and he feels slow and dull to me.

But.

If I take a deep breath and slow my brain down, slow my hands down, I notice that he just needs a second or two after my hand touches the knot, and then he backs at the lightest touch. Wait a second, that's not slow, nor dull. That's him responding in exactly the time frame Kate says he should need, as a horse.

Lead changes clearly make sense to him!

 

Now I should say, this is for things that are not yet automatic responses for him. For new things, I have to give him space to process and an appropriate level of escalating pressure. Once a thing IS automatic, for the most part he responds immediately and with such a soft aid. He's desperate to work and to give me the right answer almost robotically once he learns something new. 

 

You can see the moment when fast-twitch Connor decides he's had enough of Disco being in the lead, speeds up and cuts him off to remind him who's in charge (Connor is still, for now, very much in charge of their field).

 

It struck me that without Kate, I would have made this horse dull. 

I would have asked too loudly and too quickly to ever give him a chance to learn subtlety, and he would have shut down and got resentful. He may still, I don't know, I'm not an expert horse trainer and I do expect to make mistakes with him. But Kate has at least given me a chance to meet him where he is and to see him for what he is.

It's kind of cheating to practice ground tying when he's absolutely exhausted after running around like an idiot with Connor before his lesson, but hey, seize the day right? PC: Leah

Disco continues to be the best baby horse, even as we enter what should be his "teenage" phase. I will knock on wood for that, and fully expect him to push us at some point still, but so far, so good.

As far as training him goes, I feel relatively confident in my ability to train him, but less confident about fixing any problems I accidentally create, so my three rules to live by are "small steps", "set him up for success", and "don't rush it".  For example, crosstying. I want him to crosstie, but there are a lot of skills involved in getting there (and a baseline level of maturity needed too). So far, going back a year ago:

1. I taught him to give to pressure in a halter and lead, including a "head down" cue.
2. I simulated standing tied by weaving the lead rope through the bars of his stall.
   
3. Once I was confident that his reaction to feeling the crown of the halter was to step forward and release pressure, I taught him to tie in the arena with the help of a blocker tie ring. I introduced this over the winter, then didn't touch it at all for several months.
   
4. I taught him to tie in his stall, which has a less secure attachment point than the arena.
   
5. Over the course of several months, I let the routine become "every day you get tied to the wall in your stall and I pick your feet out and you have to stand there for it," until this was a boring and normal part of his life.
   
6. I cross tied him twice over the summer in the wash rack, first with Mary's help and then alone, both times it was very hot and I knew my water-loving baby would want a bath, but then I left it alone for about three months.

 

Oh Connor. Haha.

Over the summer, I didn't work with him much at all, partially because when the horses are on night turnout, the time that I have to work with him during the week is when he's antsy to go outside after being in all day. And yes, he does have to learn that he has to work whenever I tell him to, but at 14-18 months old, that's a LOT to ask. See previous statement about not setting him up for failure.

Definitely helpful when the horse trains himself sometimes too, lol

Last week, we went back to day turnout, and I felt like I could adequately set him up for success in introducing crosstying and that he was mature enough for it. I waited until they came in from a day of turnout, and he'd had dinner and was standing around looking bored in his stall. Then I put Connor and Disco in sets of aisle crossties facing each other, so that Disco would have something to look at. 

Once I was confident that he wasn't going anywhere and that he understood the assignment, I picked his feet out just like our usual evening routine in his stall, just in a different place. One thing he's familiar with (the routine of being restrained and getting his feet picked out every night), one new thing (crosstying).

He was perfect. Better than perfect. It was no big deal to him, which made me feel good about the year of prep work and the slow, incremental steps I took to get there. I picked his feet out, gave him really good scratches in his favorite places with my Hands on Grooming Gloves, ran a Tiger's Tongue over him and put him right back in his stall. He was only crosstied for a couple of minutes and never had a chance to get bored.

Finally going through a fugly phase, I thought it might never happen!

 

I'm not going to take it for granted or push it. I know he's still a tad young to be crosstied, and certainly not for long periods of time. But we'll "plateau" here for a while, continuing to pick his feet out in his stall most nights but doing the crossties as a fun five minute "field trip" once or twice a week, until that too becomes a boring routine and we're both hungry for a new challenge - maybe standing there for 10 minutes instead of 5 a few months from now, that kind of thing.

One small step at a time!

Mary said something to me a couple of weeks ago that stuck with me. "If you were as confident with riding as you are with training dogs, you'd be a lot more effective rider."

Kate, of course, made me unpack that because that's what Kate does. "Why do you think you're not as confident with horses?"

The well-trained Dingo

I think it's that I'm so used to thinking of myself as wrong, my biomechanics as flawed, and my reactions as bad, and the horse as the long-suffering and wronged party, that I have a hard time thinking "I don't like this behavior and I am going to change it" like I do with dogs.

 I can't subconsciously pull on a dog's mouth or accidentally hit them with my spur or sit crookedly on them. I use the equivalent of a big bit as an emergency brake and finesse tool (prong collar), yet it almost never engages because they're so well-trained to focus on me. I am VERY black and white with dog training - my dogs are solid citizens and know what's expected of them in every moment once we install the basics. Does my horse?

Aeres looking downright #chonky last week <3

Watching Mary ride Aeres two weeks ago, I was struck by how she got on and made things black and white, and how quickly Aeres submitted to her and got down to business. Wrong answer, don't do that, try again. Right answer,  GOOD PONY! It's the same way CGP rides Connor.

"Yes ma'am"

When I told CGP about this particular confidence hangup last weekend, and she said, "You are always right. Even if you're asking for the "wrong" thing, the horse has to listen as if you were right. You have to believe you're right."

I'm starting to ride Aeres with more authority after realizing this, because letting Aeres get away with whatever she wants to is a recipe for a very unpleasant ride. However, letting Connor get away with whatever he wants to is, as I put it to CGP last weekend, "this perfect homeostasis that we're both comfortable in and in which nothing terribly bad happens." But also nothing good - no progress - can happen there either.

Aeres yes ma'am'ing me last week

I think it's just as possible to blame yourself too much just like it's possible to blame the horse too much for what goes wrong in a ride. But submission is a collective for a reason - the horse has to submit to whatever you're doing. And hopefully we as riders are educated enough that we're asking for the right thing in the right way.

Thoughts? Anyone else been through this transition before? It's hard to have spent my entire adult life taking lessons that amount to "here's all the things you're doing wrong" and to now have to step up and say "I'm doing some things right and you need to listen to me!"

I've gotten several comments asking about my new weekly riding routine with Connor, now that I'm riding 5-6 days a week.  I'm not quite ready to write that post yet - I still feel like I'm figuring that out myself - but I have noticed some little patterns.

One of those little patterns is that the first ride back after a day off is always "meh".  It's not bad, but it's not going to knock my socks off.  It won't be the ride in which we school something challenging or new.

Not going to get this level of straightness on a Day 1 ride

Realizing that has helped me temper my expectations, especially after business trips.  I go into the first ride aiming for soft, bendy, on my aids, stretching over his back and seeking the contact.  I get there, and I quit, no matter how badly I want to keep going.

It's been such a healthy realization for my super-competitive mind to acknowledge that there's an ebb and flow to the week, and to the quality of work we get each ride - and that it's on a more granular spectrum than just "day off" to "hack" to "Dressage schooling."  There are Dressage schooling days, and then there are Dressage Schooling Days.

I'd be okay with getting here on Day 1.  Also, man things have changed a lot since Pony Cup.

It's also helped me maximize my lessons.  If you remember my schedule from the old barn, I never came out to the barn on Wednesdays, and my lessons were always on Thursdays.  So, our lessons have almost always been Day 1 rides in the past.

Now, I'm able to see a lesson coming, make sure I ride the day before so that we can genuinely work on tough stuff in the lesson, and plan Connor's off-days accordingly.  It's helping me take baby steps toward feeling out a real weekly schedule.

In my last post, I talked about how few lessons I've had this summer, and how that wasn't a bad thing.
Really, this post goes back to late March of this year, or the moment I knew I was leaving my old barn.  At the time, I thought I'd be seeing my trainer much less, so I started preparing myself for that by pretending I didn't have a trainer.

All photos in this post are NDPC outtakes taken by my mom. Thanks, Mom!

I started to become more independent of my trainer for the first time.  I started to say "no" when she asked me to do something before he was warmed up enough to really do it.  I started to really think for myself, and acted like I wasn't in a program - which I have been for my entire adult riding career at this point.

(This post also is a shoutout to EquiNovice's thought provoking post on a similar topic (who, incidentally, also rides with my trainer.))


For my entire adult riding life, if I didn't have regular lessons, the wheels would fall off between lessons.  But after a summer of very few lessons in which the wheels most definitely didn't fall off (quite the opposite, I think) I realized that the wheels were falling off while I was in regular lessons because I was letting my trainer practically ride and think for me.


I'm not saying regular lessons are a bad thing, but you have to make a conscious effort to be a thinking, independent rider in that situation.  It's fine to rely on your trainer heavily when you're a beginner/intermediate rider, but there comes a point where you are not going to progress anymore until you become more of an equal partner in the trainer/student relationship, and less of a...remote controlled robot?

And it's okay to be at the point in time where you're not independent of your trainer.  I was there for a long long time.  Just know that it's not the end-game, and you've got a serious responsibility to start developing that independent thinking whenever and wherever you can.

Showing by myself and warming myself up are also things I didn't think I'd ever be capable of.   And I am more than capable of them now.

So, I'm going back to regular lessons next month because I'll have to, but with a new attitude toward them.

Anyone else made this transition?

Now that this is finally public knowledge, I can share: my trainer is moving her program to my new barn!

All photos in this post by my mom

My move happened first, but she got the idea shortly thereafter.  She's always wanted to be in this area, and my new BO's have always wanted to see their gorgeous basically private facility used to its fullest potential.  It seems to be a match made in heaven.


With that will come changes.  New arena footing, additional stalls being built, my board (sadly) going right back up to where it was.  My wallet really enjoyed my three month reprieve though, ha.

WOO new footing

You may have noticed I haven't written about lessons much this summer.  I haven't had a ton of them, what with all the work she's been doing getting ready to move facilities and houses (not easy, as it turns out).  I genuinely feel like the break has been good for both of us, which is a story for another post.

Happy pony in his cushy digs

So there you go.  Now my pony and my trainer will be eight minutes from my house. Or as my husband says, "You are the luckiest person I know, you know that?"

Another one of those work swings snuck up on me.  I'm basically doing two jobs right now, and a whole lot of travel to Michigan, and neither of those things are good for blogging or riding.

"Where've ya been?"

Guess who's going to bootcamp?


After championships, I was 1. Feeling kind of down, and 2. Desperately wanting to change something.  So I asked my trainer if we could do full training for the month of November.  Now that I am somewhat removed from that experience, I know we made progress last season, but it really didn't feel like it at the time.

Since then, we've had some really good rides and figured some things out.  I learned some things about my body and about how to ride him, those will be written up probably from a hotel room this week.  I'm feeling way less down about things than after championships.

Free bird!

I went back and forth on whether to keep the full training month, but in the end, decided to go ahead with it.  It surprisingly won't add a ton to my board bill (sigh), and I'm going to be traveling/working a LOT in November.  It will give him consistency when he'd otherwise be sitting in a field, time without my crooked body on his back, and loads of time with my skilled trainer on his back.  I've done half training before, and during/immediately after that month was some of our quickest progress.  Here's hoping that happens again.

Full training is five sessions a week, any combination of lessons and training rides.  As much as possible, she wants me to be there for the training rides to observe and listen as she talks through what she's doing.  I'll still make all my usual trips out there, but may not even hack him.  As much as possible, I want her to be either the one sitting on his back, or the one directing me as I sit on his back.

Here goes nothing!

I want to thank every single one of you for commenting on my somewhat whiny and very lost post last week.  I'm glad I posted it, and I'm glad you all responded, because I've learned a lot in the past week and have a totally different perspective on things now.

Perspective: Make sure you take as much time for pre-lesson selfies as you do practicing shoulder-in.

I've come to understand two things:
1. Where we are is normal.
2. Connor is not an easy ride.

Second one first: I've had two professionals ride him over the years, my trainer and semi-local Dressage trainer Nancy K, and both have said that he is a difficult ride.  I never really understood that, because I didn't know any better, but I'm starting to understand it.  It was never clearer than in last week's lesson.

My lesson was mind-blowingly good, in large part because there were a ton of distractions that he kept spooking at, and he was high as a kite.  He was not only genuinely on my aids, he had that extra sparkle in everything he did.  (This is why he goes better at shows than at home, too!)

My trainer asked me to close my hip angle slightly to slow him down; he did, immediately.  Then he pulled me out of the saddle ever so slightly, and my hip angle changed a millimeter, and he sped up again.

I got a remote controlled Android tripod, look, it's a non-crossties picture!

She basically said that that's the crux of the issue: when I am still and then he goes well, it's not the fact that I'm still that makes him go well, it's that my position is consistent.  And for Connor, the margin of consistency is tiny, which makes him a tough ride.  It's extreme, and it's the difference between him looking like an up-down lesson horse and a Dressage horse.  Either as a result of his small size relative to the rider's or his sensitive, worried and easily overwhelmed nature, he requires an absolute consistency to an extent that other horses don't.

"What, me worry?"

And as far as this being normal - Megan's post helped me understand that riding doesn't get easier as the horse improves.  Things become possible with a well-trained horse, but they don't become automatic and riding doesn't become easy.  In fact, in many ways riding gets harder as you go up the levels, and this stage that I'm in is where you either figure it out in such a way that you're left with the tools to deal with the complexity that comes later on, or where you decide Dressage beyond this point isn't for you.

Things become possible, but not automatic.  Skills aren't buttons, they're collections of aids that still have to be applied in the right cadence/in the right sequence.

Re-reading Hilda Gurney's article "The Six Phases of a Second Level Ride"  helped me realize that some/many/all? horses start out feeling like a bus with a flat tire.  The feelings she talks about developing in her warmup are the things I work through in mine too, I'm just not as good at dealing with it. Yet.

Finally, Austen called us 'second level', which at first I was like "We're not second level."  Then I looked at the second level tests and realized oh wow, our lessons are spent almost entirely schooling second level movements right now, and we can perform all of the required movements for second level.  Are we ready to put them together in a test?  Not yet.  I'd call us "showing first, schooling second" right now.

All that said, I have a game plan going forward now,but that's a post for another day.

I wrote this on Saturday, after a really great lesson.

I'm etching this into the blog for posterity, because it's where we are, despite knowing how it sounds.  And I'd love some constructive criticism (or maybe a kick in the butt) especially from those who have moved up the Dressage levels (paging Karen and Megan).

In my lesson today, I confessed to my trainer that I'm struggling more than ever in my rides on my own right now, despite my lessons being amazing. I mean, that's something she needs to know.  If you just looked at my lessons right now, you'd think we were moving through the Dressage pyramid at light speed.

(And you may notice that I have definitely had trouble writing about the rides on my own lately.  There's not much to say about them, they're just not good.)


I told her, "Riding has never been harder than it is at this stage.  I have developed enough feel to know when things are going wrong, when he's crooked, but without you calling me out on exactly what's going wrong,  I often can't fix it.  My rides on my own are consistently mediocre, despite my lessons being incredible.  I try everything you have recently told us, but it's often not the right answer in that moment."

Right now, I know he's capable of moving like I've never felt a horse move before, and I get that in every single lesson without exception (and that kind of consistency is a huge achievement for us), but his best moments in my rides on my own are only about 25% as good as they are in lessons, and sometimes I can't even get that far.

Regardless of how often I get the "high" rides, the whole program right now is doing amazing things for Connor's topline and overall muscling.  Girl look at that body.

On Saturday, she watched our warmup (we warm up on our own, while the previous lesson is wrapping up), which was mediocre despite my best efforts, and within minutes she had us going amazingly well, by having me focus on my stillness.

She pointed out that in my efforts to get him straight/through/etc in my warmup, I was moving too much and trying too much and doing too much.  Shortly after I stayed still and supportive and also didn't fall into the holes he created, he straightened up, came on my aids (and therefore stopped creating holes), and got light and consistent in the bridle.  Game time.

I don't have pictures of this, but he TROTTED OVER TO THE FENCE to greet me when he saw me pull up on Saturday. Awwwww!

She said (paraphrased), "YOU have to be the solid one.  YOU have to be the quiet one. YOU have to not fall for it when he tries to drop you off to the left.  YOU have to be patient."

The hardest thing is that there are times (often) that the right answer is to be patient and do nothing (besides sit still, straight and evenly and ask for the bend), and usually I need to do that at times when I feel like he's going terribly.  That's so counterintuitive.  He can feel like a bus with a flat tire, and the right thing to do is ask for the bend and then wait, as quietly as possible, sometimes for what feels like an eternity, until he bends and softens.  Without my trainer there to tell me 'everything is going to be okay, sit quietly and wait, this is the right thing to do', it's really hard for my brain to accept that that is the right move, or even consider it sometimes.

I took my quarter sheet home to wash it, and the barn cat was really grateful when I brought it back.  It lives on top of my tack locker in the main barn aisle, making it an ideal cat perch.

To tell you the truth, (and I know this sounds terrible and I know there are bloggers who would kill to have these "problems", which is why it's hard to share and I've rewritten this post like six times) while I am really enjoying where we are right now and how far we've come, I also can't wait to be past this stage in his training and my education.  I don't know exactly what it is that I'm waiting for, because I've never been father than this before - for him to be confirmed in being on my aids?

Swinging wildly from the most amazing moments I've ever had on horseback to being unable to duplicate that from ride to ride is such an emotional rollercoaster, because I know what we're capable of now.  My standards are higher than they've ever been.  (And horse's happiness comes first of course - Connor seems to be thriving on the work and the routine, so no issues there.)

The answer to everything, physically and mentally, is patience.

As we were cooling out from our lesson on Saturday, my trainer continued to complement how hard Connor was thinking about the half pass exercise, and how good he did in that lesson.


I said, "Yeah, he always focuses like that when we introduce a new lateral exercise.  I kind of think that's why things get lackluster with him, if he does the same exercise multiple days in a row, he sort of checks out and goes "Well, I already know that one," and goes on blah autopilot."

She agreed with me, thoughtfully, and said "Yeah, yeah, I agree with you.  You really can't do the same thing two days in a row with him, he likes being challenged."

Lisa has always told me that's true for Welsh Cobs more than a lot of other horses because they are so inquisitive and engaged with humans. Initially when I thought about challenging a horse and keeping them mentally engaged, I thought I needed to be mixing it up in a big way: trail ride, Dressage school, jump school, repeat.

Quarter sheet weather has firmly arrived...

But I'm learning that it's less complex than that, at least with Connor.  Every time I ask him to use his body in a new way, even if it's just half pass on a circle rather than a straight line, that's a challenge for him, and that's fun for him.  That's something he can focus on and puzzle out.  He's also a chicken, and I think he thrives on predictable routine (regularly being asked to do Dressage), but varied exercises within that routine.

(I'm also willing to bet that I'm a lot more aware of/careful with my aids when I'm doing something I don't yet understand fully.)

Not really sure where I was going with this, except that "creating new puzzles" seems to be even more important to Connor's happiness and training advancement than dramatically changing what we're doing each day.

Someone thought it would be funny to do pony yoga (rubbing one muddy hoof over and around the opposite foreleg) in his white Majyk Equipe Dressage boots!  I work so hard to keep them white, and all he does is sabotage me.

I took the suggestions from the comments of my last post and started my ride on Saturday quietly focusing on my position and balance first, and Connor second.

It made a world of difference - he was tuned in to my quiet aids from the beginning.  Not that he was on my aids from the very beginning, but he was ready to be.

What a good looking animal, if I do say so myself.

I asked for some directive for my rides on my own right now, because in the past, we would work on an exercise each week.  It wasn't like "This is this week's exercise," it was pretty organic, but I always had something to duplicate on my rides on my own.

Loving this indoor, also, my bonnet matches my pad, you're welcome everyone.

Lately though, we work on position and feel in general, and a lot of that happens on 20m circles or shoulder in.  And don't get me wrong, we're making a ton of progress, but it feels like the progress happens in my lessons and the other six days of the week it's like ?!?!?!??!?.  And the lessons keep getting better one after the other, so I'm not complaining, but I do need to shape up my rides on my own.

So right now, it is "focus on shoulder in".  And that is helping.  I just feel like we're at a very weird in-between stage where in order to move on, we have to get around this corner.  But we haven't shown in so long (both good and bad), I don't know where we are.

The other piece of that is that we're in the self-imposed final three weeks of the renovation loan on the house (gotta get our mortgage settled before the fed (probably) raises interest rates at their meeting on the 15 (things I've never had to care about before)), and I have a massive test to pass by Nov 30 for work, so I am REALLY not riding a lot right now.  I signed him up for two trainer rides a week this month knowing it would be crazy.

I have a feeling I'll come up for air in December ready to rock with some January schooling Dressage shows.  Anyone wanna join?

I feel like my life is just about under control enough that I can start blogging again...aaaaand I leave for the CrossFit Games in Los Angeles for 10 days tomorrow.  I'll have a mix of horse posts, CrossFit posts (for the CrossFitting ladies I know are in the audience), and no posts over the next ten days.  Cheer on Nicole Holcomb if you happen to catch any of the Games footage next week!

Nicole today, already in California, fourth from the right.

I saw my trainer teaching lessons in the open jump field, so I put on jump tack, which of course meant we ended up not jumping, but it was productive and fun, so no complaints.

He tried on his insanely amazing halter Hillary sold to us, thank you, Hillary!  It fits beautifully!

We had a biomechanics lesson entirely on a 20m circle on a slight incline.  She has been working the horses on a slight incline to magnify any imbalances they have so she can fix them - and Connor's were immediately obvious.  We focused on aligning his head with his center of gravity, and not letting it go in or out of the circle.

Connor's preferred method to go downhill was throwing his forelegs out in front of him to stop himself, but not slowing his hind legs down at all.  We've noticed this on the flat too, and for a pulling breed, it makes sense.  He has no concept of where his hind legs are or how to slow them down.  Going downhill, it meant he swung his hindquarters out to either side to avoid running into his forelegs.

Does this look like a pony who doesn't know where his own hind end is?  Well...yes, yes it does.

This was one of the more fascinating lessons I've had, because I felt the whole 'teaching a new concept to a horse' process from start to finish.  The goal was to walk downhill with his hind feet behind his forefeet.  I needed him to learn to slow his hind legs down and shift some weight back onto them.

At first, he didn't know what I wanted and just barreled down the hill.  As I gained more control of his body, he started listening to me, and got confused - he'd stop and think for a second before continuing on, asking me what I wanted.

When he aaaaaalmost had it, he suddenly realized how much work it was, and we had a really funny Welsh Cob moment: he stopped on the decline, and shook his head up and down for probably 10 or 15 seconds - long enough for me to laugh and then exclaim to my trainer "Oh my gosh, he is literally telling us 'no, this is too much work!''

#myhorseisadachshund

From there he got better and better each time, and by the end, after several free walks in between good declines and lots of 'Good boys!' he was keeping it together on a fairly loose rein and I could tell he understood what I was asking and wasn't just complying with my aids physically.

My trainer said, "I know what your homework is!" and I grinned and said, "Uh, I know what YOUR homework is, he's all yours for the next 10 days," (She's putting three rides on him while I'm gone in exchange for the lessons I will miss/have missed.)   Looking forward to seeing what he feels like when I get back, I'm going to miss the little guy!

Just realized how long that mane is...oops.

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!