Cob Jockey

Connor's breeder told me last night that it makes her sad to visit this blog and not see any updates.  And I am not one to make people sad!  So I'm going to do my best to keep going.

I haven't had a proper Dressage lesson in about a month, so last week for my lesson I came out guns blazing in Dressage tack, ready for a biomechanics beatdown...and then my favorite barn rat said, "Hey, I think she's teaching XC lessons in the big field tonight."

Cue fastest tack change ever - XC vest, breastplate, saddle, girth, bridle, and fly bonnet.  Favorite barn rat was impressed.

Favorite barn rat multitasking by keeping Connor entertained (he's licking her hand) and texting while I was in the bathroom.

The lesson started out - no joke - with me breezing my Welsh Cob around the field like a racehorse, bridged reins and all, until he got tired.  He came out with so much energy, there was no way the lesson was going to be productive unless I took some of the edge off.  In my warmup, when I asked for a canter depart, he bucked so hard my neck snapped, which has never happened before.

(Found out later he'd been in all day due to heavy rain. Don't blame the little guy a bit.)

It really took five or so minutes of cantering and galloping before he stopped accelerating anytime he got the chance.  Toward the end, he really flattened out into a true ground covering gallop, which delighted my trainer, who says the canter and gallop will always be his weakest gaits and he needs to figure it out for himself and get comfortable in those gaits more often.

The best part about all that was, he was at his worst and I still never felt unsafe.  On a lot of horses, that would have been a lunging situation.


We ended up having the BEST lesson!  The highlights were:
1. Getting a true collected canter, for a long period of time, that enabled me to take the up bank, do a tight rollback in the direction of whatever lead he landed on, back to the upbank.  With a bigger canter, that would not have been possible.
2. Cantering the down bank for both of our first times ever - and it felt so smooth compared to trotting it!
3. Cantering the faux ditch for both of our first times ever, and that also felt smooth.
4. Cantering the down bank and doing a less severe but pretty small rollback immediately to canter the ditch - and not even blinking.

I came out of that lesson beaming.  Every moment I ever questioned that horse being an eventer melted away.  Sure, we have been working on those things for years, and I'm sure he'll find lions under down banks at other facilities, and I'll have to keep my guard up forever, but he CAN do these things without scrambling.

What a good boy!  Bigtime bath for the sweaty guy after all that cantering and jumping:

Connor has always attacked up banks.  He likes the long spot, and up banks lend themselves to that style of jumping.  He never even puts his nose down and peeks at them like he does every other type of stadium or XC jump.   Not knowing that, and wanting to continue to build Connor's confidence, the clinician started him out walking again.  You can see Connor go "Psh, man, I got this!" from the very first attempt.

Due to scheduling issues, we ended up schooling at the Hoosier Horse Park today, a place Connor has been many times but he'd never gone XC there before.  There were highs and lows, but overall, I'm grateful for the opportunity to have gotten that out of the way before Saturday, and I'm excited about Connor's prospects as an eventing pony.

Things we learned:

Being silly on the trailer

1. He does better when he's cantering, because when he trots the fences he has a lot of time to think.
2. When he has time to think, he looks at all the stuff around the fence (rocks, trees, people) and not the fence itself.
3. Down banks are hard for both of us, and I gave him a bad ride to our first one, which scared both of us.  It sucks to have that been his first experience, but he did go down it, albeit hesitantly, every time.  My constant problem of being forward was magnified, so when I looked down at this baby bank and went "HOLY SHIT THAT'S HUGE!" Connor went "SHE'S AFRAID, THERE MUST BE A TIGER UNDER THERE!" and launched it and I fell forward, but not off!  But I was still pretty shook up and angry at myself for knowing that was going to happen, trying to fix it, and still failing.  Thankfully, we have banks at home that we can school.
4. Up banks are awesome.  He was uncertain the first time, but every time after that I really felt him lock on to it and go, "I got this, Mom!"  It was an awesome feeling.
5. He gets tough when we're cantering out there, but not in a bad way, in an "I know my job and like it way."  Ears up, cantering around happily.
6. Water was no problemo, as expected.
7. He really enjoyed himself, after an initial "moment" at pretty much every single fence.

The down bank experience and the crappy trot fences really shook me up, which is unfortunate, because he did really well and clearly enjoyed himself.  I'll be okay, but it's clouding my mind as I write this, otherwise I'd be a lot more enthusiastic.

At the end, my trainer could tell I was down on myself, so she told me to go canter ahead of the group as they walked back to the trailer, and to take the tiny ramp jump, canter through the water, then do a long canter back to the up bank, then the fences we started with. It was the first time I got to do a long canter and the first time I cantered all those fences, and finally, it clicked.  Without that moment, I would have focused on nothing but the bad down bank experience, but ending with him listening to me, and forward, and clearly enjoying himself, and the two of us seeing our distances and not the lions next to the fences, really made me feel better.  My trainer is such a genius, and so tactful.

All in all, looking forward to this weekend!