"Acceptable" is a Bad Word

Last night I broke the news to Tracey. I had signed up for PSG. I mean she told me I could! But I prepared for the ass-kicking of a lifetime in that lesson and I was not disappointed. 

During my warm up, Rico felt explosive. He spooked at everything, refused to trot and instead cantered in place, and kept charging off whenever he felt a brush of my spur. I went over to Tracey and warned her, "he's really high tonight," I said. She looked at me like I was completely insane. "He doesn't look high," she said. My horse was resting a foot and taking a nap. So I said "he's not going to waste his energy looking energetic right now! He's saving it to buck me off later." And he certainly thought about it...

During the lesson I wanted to focus primarily on the trot since I really feel like we can get 7s across the board at the trot (well, not the extended stuff) if I ride it well. The canter work is just going to be what it's going to be. I don't know if my attitude toward the canter was much appreciated so we started with that.

I picked up the canter from the walk and was immediately told to do it again. I then proceeded to have the most nitpicky fantastic lesson on walk-canter transitions I've ever experienced. It crossed my mind that here I am signed up for PSG and I'm practicing a second level movement. It then crossed my mind that Tracey is a wizard so I went with it. The big issue was that Rico kind of shuffles into the canter a little downhill, then three strides later we both take the canter seriously and it gets better. Evidently this is bad and not worthy of the FEI levels, woops. There's a lot of things my horse does that isn't worthy of the FEI levels.

FEI horses don't allow cones on their backs

FEI horses have heads

FEI horses aren't so impressively lazy that
they can't get up to switch sides when rolling

Once as those were good, Tracey attacked worked on my inability to do anything but an "acceptable" lead change. I struggled a lot with this. She wanted me to really push him forward and uphill into the change and I'm just not very comfortable with that. Do you know how much blood, sweat, and tears (well, mostly sweat) went into getting this damn horse to change without exploding? He has HUGE changes, which I got to experience once again last night. I mean they were the best damn changes I've ever experienced in my life. But little 19 year old Megan learning to do lead changes for the first time definitely stifled them long ago.

I explained that to Tracey, that I used to be afraid of him and years were spent trying to get him quiet enough for me to ride. Now it's all muscle memory of shutting down the canter, shuffling through the change (which is merely acceptable and it seems to annoy her that it's clean despite my poor riding), and then picking him back up. So I have homework.

Next we did the trot work. The trot felt and looked (mirrors!) fantastic. Like holy shit that is not my horse, that is some fancy FEI horse someone has switched out with mine to play a mean joke on me. But no, he shook his head at me and was reluctant to bend left, definitely mine. After some 10 meter circles (and a tip from Tracey about the volte, which we didn't school- make the first half of the circle small, then spiral it out a bit. Judge at C can't tell and it actually looks better than an actual volte), we did the shoulder-in and half passes. They were shockingly good. I can't really explain it. My abs were burning though, and when I said it aloud Tracey said "good" and recommended that I go to the gym. I guess running isn't good enough!

We then touched a bit on the half passes at the canter. Once again I was satisfied with too little. It apparently isn't enough to just gallop sideways at the FEI levels, *balance* (pfft) is necessary. Oh and *collection* which Rico and I agree is just way too much, I mean come on. Once as we had such necessary things, the half pass felt as good as a half pass can feel (I hate half pass and even the good ones feel like rolling a bag of potatoes across the diagonal). Then Tracey had us straighten and ride forward to the change. One was merely acceptable, since I didn't have much time to prepare and I didn't go forward quick enough. The next one in each direction was very good so we ended there.

I have a lot of homework before Saturday, when I'm driving out to her barn to ride the actual test. Then I have a lesson Tuesday and the show next Sunday!


In other news, I teach a lesson this morning and then go to school for my third day! I had an essay due yesterday and have ten chapters to read by next week so I should probably get off of the internet and make an attempt at being a graduate student.