Cob Jockey

Connor and I have started taking lessons again.

I had been feeling the itch for a while. Not to achieve any goals, I just miss learning. There's nothing like being surprised and delighted by the sudden shift in perspective or feel that a good lesson gives you, and I need to remember to find the joy in horses especially this time of year. 

Ugh.

Connor has been going well under saddle - not often, and not intensely, but well. I have been approaching his rides from more of a rehab perspective (even though he's not injured), focusing on making sure his crooked body is in as best alignment as possible and not forcing anything. But it wasn't until my barnmate used him in her weekly CGP lesson a few weeks ago that I was like, wow, okay Connor, I see you.

Connor got drafted into this lesson because he bit my barnmate's horse right where the saddle goes. Actions have consequences, Connor.

I was struck by how relaxed he looked in the contact and how his neck is not upside down. To be honest, he never looked like this during his Dressage career. Even CGP, who had not seen him under saddle in nearly two years, was almost shocked speechless at how good he looked and complimented the way he was going several times. I started to entertain the idea that I was doing something right with my slow, patient, horse-focused approach.

But as much as I love and respect her and will ride and compete with her again someday, CGP is not right for us right now. I don't really have a good way to articulate why that is, so I won't, I will just say that I knew instinctively that longtime blogger and friend Kate was who I needed to be riding with right now. 

I'm two lessons in and haven't ridden yet, and I'm loving it!

Someone said it looked like she was teaching a lesson here and I cannot unsee it, lol

Partially because I'm nursing a back injury and partially because I am fascinated by Kate's groundwork theories having seen her work with my horses in the past, I wanted to start with groundwork. Kate thinks and feels and learns with the horses in a way that I deeply admire and that does not come naturally to me. 

To describe it in a phrase, it's like practical natural horsemanship - if you deeply understand the horse as a horse and use that to work with and not against the horse in a competitive sport context, that's sort of how I view Kate's teaching. I think a lot of trainers THINK they do that, but at the end of the day, it's nothing like what Kate is doing. And two lessons in, it's already changing the way I interact with not only the horses, but also the people and dogs in my life too.

More to come!

I've been meaning for a while to write a detailed step-by-step guide on how to use Pivo Meet for virtual lessons and Michelle finally spurred me to do it, so thank you! 

I've been doing weekly virtual lessons since the beginning of March and have only had it fail once, so this system is pretty solid. Now that said, the one big caveat is that like anything with Pivo, success or failure is VERY dependent on your phone, and Pivo Meet in particular will also be dependent on how good your cell or WiFi signal is at the barn.

No WiFi at our barn, and cell signal inside the indoor isn't quite as good as it is outside, but it's still plenty good enough for Pivo Meet lessons. FWIW this area is still on 4G, too.

For reference, my phone is a top-of-the-line five-month-old Samsung S21 Ultra. I mention that to point out that some of my success with it might be because it's one of the most powerful phones you can currently buy. If you have trouble with Pivo Meet and you're using an older phone, know that it may be the phone's fault and not Pivo's. I do know some of my GP trainer's other students have more trouble with it than I do.

Supply list for virtual lessons:

1. Phone
2. Pivo Silver
   
3. Pivo AND Pivo Meet apps installed on your phone
4. Either decent cell signal or WiFi at your barn
   
5. If you're using cell signal, make sure your data plan has enough data for a long video call.  Pivo Meet has been using 1-1.5GB per month for me, and I've been getting 3-4 30-45 minute lessons per month.
   
6. Tripod
7. Bluetooth wireless earbuds - I use these. I recommend getting ones that are Bluetooth 5.0+ as that standard allows for the best range.
8. An empty arena with no horses in the background. My barn is small and accommodating enough that I have my lesson time on the calendar in the feed room and everyone knows I need one arena to myself at that time.

Step-by-step Instructions

1. Set up tripod and Pivo in arena - I personally like mine just off-center of X for lessons, because my trainer will often have me on a 20m circle around the camera.

2. Put one wireless earbud in your ear and confirm that it's connected to the phone - I don't like riding with two earbuds in for safety reasons, and I choose to use the left one because on my earbuds, that's the side that has the microphone. If you have a spectator, they can use the other one to listen in on the lesson.

3. Make sure the phone is NOT in Do Not Disturb mode - I set Pivo Meet up and then get on my horse before my trainer connects. If she's unable to enter the Pivo Meet room for some reason and has to call me over the regular phone, I need to be able to hear that call. 

DND is off

4. With the Pivo robot on, open the Pivo Meet app, make sure "Guest control" is checked, and hit the "Share" button next to the meeting URL before you hit "Start Call" - A couple of important points here: that URL is unique for every Pivo Meet call you hold, so you must send a new one every lesson. Also, while you do also have the ability to share the URL after you hit "Start Call", I've found that if I leave the Pivo Meet call to send the URL, the video image is flipped when I re-enter the meeting room, and can you imagine trying to virtually teach a Dressage lesson when left and right are flipped on you?! So do it the way I show you here. Hopefully that's a bug that they'll fix in the future.

'Guest control' allows your trainer to manually move the robot using controls on their end if it loses you, so you don't have to get off the horse

5. Click the app you'd like to share the URL with (for me, that's my end-to-end encrypted texting app, Signal #privacymatters)

Sorry iPhone folks, you're on your own for screenshots.

6. Text the URL to your trainer - Because I set all this up before my warm-up, which I do without her, I also send a reminder of my lesson time so she doesn't see the text and think she has to jump into the room immediately.

Note that I sent this text at 6:28, then got on Connor, and then she joined me at 6:45

7. Go back into the Pivo Meet app, click "Start Call" and check all settings once you're into the room - The settings in Pivo Meet (exposure, zoom, etc) work just like in the regular Pivo app, so double check them. Also, there's a mute button inside the call, which occasionally after an app update will be inexplicably enabled and then my trainer can't hear me, so check that as well if you're having audio issues.

That's it. After step 7, I get on Connor and do my warmup, and about 15 minutes later her voice magically appears in my ear, and we have what feels to my brain like a normal, everyday lesson. Except she's 112 miles away from me!

Hit me with any questions you have, I'm happy to help.

Last night in my weekly virtual lesson, when GP trainer asked what I wanted to work on, I said simple changes, and the first one I did, I barely had to try for and it was effortless and flawless in a way I have never felt before.

"Holy shit!" I said probably too loudly into the microphone, "What just happened?!" 

"Balance," she said, "He was in a good balance from the moment you did the upward transition and he wasn't leaning on his underneck or either of your reins. The moment he uses his underneck against you, you're cooked."

He looks SO GOOD right now. Even over video GP trainer noticed how much muscle he's put on in his butt lately, and he has dapples and this gorgeous chocolate chestnut color that only lasts a month.

She had had me start the movement from the halt, where I briefly asked him to "look into a bucket," one of OLGW's phrases. I ask him to go slightly behind the vertical for a moment and completely release his underneck and make sure he's following his nose in both reins before asking him to walk on and then canter.

But I didn't just let him walk off however he wanted. I was to make sure his "breastplate" stayed up and that he didn't plow forward and down into the walk in a poor balance. If we didn't do the transition right, we stopped, did a reinback and did it again until it was good, because it mattered to the quality of the simple change that much. Connor naturally wants to initiate walking off from the halt with his front feet, which means I have to fix the balance of the walk first thing (and I often don't and just deal with the consequences).

I don't really have a good picture of it, but in this one you can see his weight is a little more over his forehand than his hind end, although this is way better than it can be. He's very comfortable keeping his feet where they are in this picture, but moving his bodyweight and torso more forward, to where the front legs aren't so perpendicular to the ground. If he walks off like that, we're asking for poor quality from the moment he steps off.

I asked for some first toolkit instructions for how to get him to walk off in better balance and start the transition from the hind feet, and she told me to ask the front feet to stay stationary by holding the reins steady while telling the hind feet to step toward the front feet by closing my legs.

Balance wasn't the whole problem though. Olivia really identified a key issue last weekend (which, credit where credit is due, my GP trainer has also harped on me about this for a year now, but her solution wasn't quite as crystal clear to me as Olivia's). If he's not supple enough to follow each rein, particularly the inside rein in turns, that means he's locked up against me in one or the other rein, and I have no chance of riding the simple change from my inside leg to my outside rein, which IT TURNS OUT is very important and I have not been doing that this whole time.

So while cantering, I would be on a circle, asking his body to follow his nose a la the Olivia exercise from last weekend, while also really exaggerating my inside leg to outside rein aids to prepare for and execute the transition. To the point that I was almost leg yielding him out of the circle in canter, which, I won't always do it that extremely, but it sure helped me understand the feeling of what I should be doing.

I still haven't found a reliable way to screen record virtual lessons, so how about another pic of the kid?

We probably did 15 simple changes total in both directions last night, and 13 of them were flawless. The two that weren't were both in his tough direction, and in both times she immediately said, "What rein did he lock up on during that?" and I said "Inside" and she had me get him following his nose again, try again and then it was perfect.

I'm trying not to let myself attach too much importance to last night or get too excited, because this is horses and Dressage: odds are I'll come out tonight and not be able to ride a single one. But it really feels like I'm starting to understand how the basics affect things like simple changes, and it feels like I'm really learning how to RIDE Second Level all of a sudden, which has me so excited for the future.

I had my second virtual lesson with my GP trainer on Wednesday, and I STILL have no media because Pivo can't figure out the bug with Samsung's new flagship phone (which by their own admittance, should be the poster child for the right phone to have for Pivo).

Sigh. Anyway.

You could boil this lesson down to "use the inside rein less, use the outside rein more". Starting out, he was a little checked out, so she had me ask for haunches in and then haunches out on the 20m circle at the walk. She said eventually she wanted his front feet to stay on the same track, but not to expect to get there today.

I promise at some point I will collect my thoughts and write in-depth about Pilates, Liz!

We started on the left, and, as usual, he was pushing through my right side and tipping his withers to the right, like when I put him into either HI or HO, the first step he took was always to the move the right fore right. She identified that I was overusing my inside rein and underusing my inside leg. She had me take up more outside rein contact, move my outside leg back, and apply my inside leg at the girth, and get aggressive about it.

Within a few minutes, with a much more respectful pony, we were doing this at the trot. Then we moved to use the whole arena for HI/HO (really just thinking about it) at the canter and counter canter, where that whole outside rein/outside leg thing really came home to roost.

We did the short side on the left (true) lead, and then immediately came across the diagonal to start CC to the right, and we stayed on CC for probably 3 laps of the arena as she worked through fixing my biomechanics. She had me sit on the left seatbone, keep the outside leg behind the girth, and then kept saying "more outside rein, more outside rein, left shoulder back, more outside rein."

"F is for friends who do stuff together..."

When I FINALLY got the amount of left rein applied that she wanted, suddenly my definition of "a straight horse" changed. I would have told you he was straight before I got the outside rein contact right, but once he was properly in my outside rein, suddenly the "inside rein horse" I had before felt banana shaped.

This had the effect of making the counter canter very balanced and rideable, where before it had always been a "Jesus take the wheel" movement for us. And once we had that, we started playing with moving his body parts around, just slightly.

HAPPY BASEBALL SEASON, Y'ALL!

She said what I had just done was what she and her coach (OLGW) do every day in their warmups, although I know it was oversimplified. Can I move the body parts around, and then "lots of counter canter, until it becomes boring, and then BOOM you're going GP!" Haha. She also reiterated something she's said in the past which is that this is why skipping Second Level is a mistake, because movements like CC and the TOH serve as diagnostics for fundamentals that need to be in place before you move up. Just doing them is not enough, but if you're able to do them WELL, you're in a lot better place as you go to Third and Fourth.

So it became really clear that in overusing the inside rein, especially to the right, I have created a banana-shaped pony, and that has to get fixed before things like flying changes are even remotely possible.

Quick Aeres update before I start this post: She ate and swallowed food yesterday! Slowly, and she still can't drink water, but it's progress enough for us to have hope that the nerves are coming back. They put her back on the feeding tube overnight to get her hydrated and will leave it out again all day today. More to come!

On Friday I had my first ever virtual lesson with my trainer, who is still in Florida until next week. This is not only my first ever virtual lesson with her, it was my first time doing a virtual lesson at all.

Because my new phone is still not compatible with Pivo (but will be soon), my barnmate graciously agreed to video my lesson for me using Google Duo. She wore one of my Bluetooth wireless earbuds, and I wore the other, so that we could both hear CGP.

I don't know what I was expecting, but guys, this virtual lesson thing is a game changer. CGP has been teaching virtual lessons for a long time and was just as effective virtually as she is in real life. I ended the lesson having accomplished just as much, gotten pushed just as hard, and gotten just as much valuable information as I do when I go visit her. 

Totally forgot to screen record the lesson so there are no pics or vids. Next time!

The only "technical difficulty" I had is that there was a minuscule delay, maybe a half second or less, between when I did something and when she saw it and responded, or when she saw something and then told me to do something. That wasn't a dealbreaker though, and we didn't even discuss it, it just changed the cadence of the lesson slightly and made me quick to anticipate what she was going to ask me to do.

(And I should say, my lesson on Friday was primarily on quick and rapid fire transitions, so in a less intense lesson, you wouldn't notice the delay at all.)

On a macro level, I find myself getting really excited about this virtual lesson thing, as someone who has always felt disenfranchised (from a horse perspective) by living in the Midwest. If Indiana residents have access to the same quality of instruction as someone on the East Coast or in the Bay Area, that levels the playing field in ways that have never been possible before.

You mean I can have my $80,000 3700sqft fixer upper AND access to the top trainers in the country? Sign me the f*** up. (My house, six years ago!)

On a micro level, I find myself thinking about situations that were impossible before, like, oh my gosh I can conceivably lesson with CGP every single week now without taking PTO, spending thousands in gas and ulcer treatments, and putting the wear and tear on my truck. And wow, I could forgo the cost of Florida but keep riding with her all winter and not lose a step.

As much as I weirdly enjoy hauling, I cannot deny it's expensive and time-consuming

Now, are there downsides or things that aren't as good over video? Sure. Biomechanics-focused lessons are just naturally going to be better in person - especially for someone with a slow brain-body connection like me, it's a downside that she can't reach up and grab my leg and put it where it needs to be. She can't get on the horse herself if things are going sideways. If your barn doesn't have WiFi, it does use data - (an hour lesson used 0.49GB of data on my phone). And at least with Duo, we had to stay on a 20m circle because it can't zoom in and out. 

All that said, virtual lessons are here to stay for me. I signed up for a standing weekly 5:45pm virtual lesson, and hope to visit her in person once a month to augment what I'm able to get virtually. I'm excited to have weekly lessons once again!