Return of the Rogue Left Hand

Every year my horse tries to turn into an appaloosa.

My little appaloosa

Ignore the ill-fitting halter...

Fixed the halter... 

He's always been pretty dapple-y but this year is craziness! He has them everywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if he started to shit dapple-y manure.

This week is spring break! And I started off the week by visiting my brother, his girlfriend, and my best friend in southern California before coming back to a big dose of ego deflation at my lesson with Tracey this Tuesday night.

Ego deflation made better by pretty pictures

I've spoken before about my issues with my own perception under saddle. I sit what I assume is perfectly straight in the tack at each lesson while my trainer violently cringes at my crookedness. The stupidest part of all is that despite having access to mirrors, I cannot see my crookedness.

That's what you want in a trainer, eh?

But I have no problem seeing crookedness in my students. I can see someone sitting crooked from a mile away, but myself? Nothing.

Good thing I have my own trainer!

The lesson wasn't great. I mean it was great because Tracey knows all but it wasn't great because I almost cried like six times. Part of that is left over from midterms, part of it is the stress from last weekend, part of it is because of a few other minor personal issues that arose earlier in the day. But most of it is because I was having a minor tantrum.

Lucky horse 

Remember my issue with pulling on the left rein? If you don't, let me brief you: I pull on the left rein like it's the rope tied around my family keeping them from plunging to their deaths. I pull on the left rein like I'm trying to start a chainsaw. I pull on the left rein like I'm drawing my hand back to punch someone in the face.

I have myself completely deluded into thinking that Rico is heavy on the left rein and that pulling is the answer. Lately he's been heavier. Interesting that he's heavier the more I stress. And the more I stress the more I pull... Totally unrelated. Not.

Tracey scolded me for hanging on the curb rein at the beginning of the lesson. I dropped it a bit and felt the heaviness on the snaffle. Ugh. I complained. Tracey gave me a list of reasons why he's feeling heavy and we began plugging away. First, I ride him too much behind the vertical. Second, his neck gets short. Third, I PULL ON THE FUCKING REINS ALL THE TIME LIKE MY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.

At least the barn I board at is beautiful?

After fixing the first two, we began on the third. Don't pull on the left rein, Megan, don't do it.

I struggled a LOT and we stopped. We evaluated why I pull on the rein. I pull because I feel like I need to. I pull because he's heavy on that rein and I need to *soften* him. I pull because he isn't bending.

News flash: none of those reasons are real but Tracey was more delicate than I would have been.

Tracey asked me to uberstreichen. Basically let go of the left rein. Pfft, I thought, he's going to fall on his face if I do that, he's going to counter bend, he's going to come off the bit.

He stayed in balance. He stayed uphill. He lightened. He stayed bending. All that happened was that I felt his little brain sigh in relief as his stupid rider finally got her head out of her ass and rode properly for once.

DAMNIT! Like I said, my ego is pretty badly bruised.

He isn't totally perfect... I mean he does paw occasionally

"Why do you pull on the left rein?" and I had no answers. I don't know why I pull on that rein.

I'm not going to pull on it anymore. Rico approves.

Rico also approves of fresh shavings

And naps!

Today I have an ENTIRE day off for the first time in a long long time. I plan on reading, running if it stops raining, cleaning all my tack, and riding my awesome horse. 

Transitions Transitions Transitions

Last night Rico and I had our first lesson back after his injections and my back injury! It went very well. We worked primarily on the piaffe and passage, including our first lesson on transitions between the piaffe and passage and the walk-passage transitions.

First let me start by apologizing for being a little MIA recently. I've been completely losing my mind a bit stressed over graduate school. All posts I attempted to write in the last two weeks or so ended up being a massive bitch fest about graduate school and had nothing to do with the horse other than "I couldn't ride today because I got on and started freaking out so we walked around a bit."

Now, however, I'm feeling better. We only have one more paper which I have done and one more (take home) midterm which I'm almost done with. The work isn't over with but the massive stress that was this week is now dwindling and I'm so much happier.

I was feeling better enough to actually take my lesson last night! Yay!

Like I said, I came in asking Tracey to look at the passage. Since she last saw us, the passage is much better, and she agreed. She said that he's very even which is awesome because when we first started, he wanted to flick his right front way out instead of really lifting. She now wants me to start playing with transitions within the passage. So I'm supposed to ask him to cover a bit more ground, then bring him back, then go forward again. I could feel how he struggled with that. He's kind of stuck in one movement which is great but makes it difficult to do any sort of transitions in and out of the passage without him falling out of it. More on that later...

We then moved on to the piaffe. Apparently Rico is finally learning to SIT in the piaffe instead of just do the half step shuffle. Tracey told me that I did a good job keeping him moving forward and not pushing him to be too much on the spot. Right now since he's learning, it's important for him to learn to be active and step up to the bridle in the piaffe rather than getting backwards and sticky. Eventually when he's stronger, bringing him more on the spot will result in a really quality piaffe! Nice :)

Rico needed a little breather so I asked her about transitions. I've played with them a bit and it's HARD. The only way I get good ones are when Rico is feeling too good and I risk being launched.

She said he was strong enough now to begin playing with transitions as long as I took it slow. Progress!

We first played with the passage to piaffe transition. A lot of horses, she said, struggle with that since they kind of drop into the piaffe OR they stay in the passage and just passage in place. Rico tended to drop which isn't a bad thing at this point. He understands, but he can't keep his rhythm yet. No big deal, I'm supposed to play with shortening and lengthening the passage and continue strengthening the piaffe.

The out was... entertaining. He knew UP was the answer so he'd usually fling himself out of the piaffe sideways, then trot two steps, THEN passage.

The same thing happened when attempting the walk to passage transition. This damn thing has been the bane of my existence and I wasn't all that enthused about having to do it again. Leo took a LOT of leg, he made me work for it, so the first time I did it on Rico... he stood up.

Whatever, it wasn't big and technically he did do what I was asking.

Those got MUCH better once as I stopped aiding so hard and he realized that I wasn't trying to get a rear out of him.


Overall I'm super pleased. I feel like we're making some real progress with these upper level movements that were once impossible.

Oh so I have some awesome conformation pictures of Rico buuuuut they're on my desktop computer and have not been edited yet. So I may edit this post and add them later!

A Year of Lessons

As of March 3rd (tomorrow), I've taken lessons with Tracey for a year!

I can't believe how much Rico and I have changed in the last year. Biting the bullet and taking regular (expensive) lessons with a big name trainer was a really hard decision. I had to put away my ego and brace myself for a constantly depleting bank account but I'm so glad that I did.

At the end of 2012, Rico and I showed for the first time since 2009. We did fourth level test one and scored a 62% and some change. It was about the same quality test that it had been in 2009 and I was closer to Prix St George only in that my horse was finally sound after three years of battling injury after injury.

Riding with too high hands and too high a headset on a
frustrated yet unacceptably patient horse

First show back in 3 years

Not terrible but not an FEI horse

Winter of 2012 was rough. Rico and I started having issues again brought on by my inability to ride a horse this powerful, problems I had always had with him. I started looking for a trainer and at the end of February, I watched a clinic Tracey was teaching and was impressed. Her attention to detail is incredible, she sees everything, even things I can't begin to feel. She is firm about the basics coming first and wasn't afraid to bring riders in the clinic back to the walk to address a concern.

March 3rd in 2013 was my first clinic with her. I came into the clinic without any expectations. She asked me what I was working on and I blurted out that I wanted to do Prix St George on this damn horse. I wanted him to do the pirouettes, I wanted the zig zag to be better, I wanted to have him do his tempis without getting so crooked.

Getting scolded a bit. 

My first lesson was all walk-trot transitions with a little canter at the end. And that's when I knew she was the perfect trainer for me.

Lots of walking!

Oooo some trotting

I get really ambitious. Too ambitious. The sky isn't the limit for Rico and I, there is no limit. I wanted him to go Prix St George so badly that I was focusing exclusively on those movements figuring that if I practiced them enough, we'd be able to do it. Tracey knocked me down to reality and helped me retrain my horse.

A month (or so) after our first lesson

After three months of the basics, in June of 2013 I moved Rico up to 4th test 2. We earned a 65% and I was in absolute shock.

Half pass right

Preparing for our first pirouette

A few weeks later we did another 4-2 and despite a bad warm up and a high horse, we earned a 63%.

Move over, Rico!

Trying to hold it all together

After a pelvis injury at the end of July, Rico and I were back on track for Prix St George. I picked the show carefully, we were going to do the September Yarra Yarra show. The same facility I did my very first show ever on Rico. The same facility I did my first Prix St George on Leo and my first Grand Prix. I have a lot of really great memories there and I know that the footing is perfect and that Rico performs well there.

Young Rico and teenage Megan trying to stay in control at
Rico's first ever dressage show!

We earned a 65%! I couldn't believe how well it went. We struggled a tad in the pirouettes, and had a misstep in the 3-tempis, but other than that, perfection. (I have pictures but not on this blog for some reason... I might go find them and post them but they're not that impressive).

I decided to do another Prix St George at Greenville in October. We had a miscount in the 3s and 4s (one my fault and one his) but we walked away with a 66%!

Charging up centerline in my fancy new shadbelly

Right pirouette coming along alright

Finally, I decided to end the year at Starr Vaughn Equestrian in November. I should have scratched. I was very very sick and couldn't ride very much the week coming up to the show. We arrived and my horse was a psycho. I barely made it through the test and ended up being sick the entire next week. But we got a 61% for 3rd out of 7!

This horse is sassy.

So sassy

At the last minute, I was welcomed into an Alfredo Hernandez clinic at the end of November. I had my sights on Grand Prix. I'm missing my two Grand Prix scores for my USDF Gold Medal and to get them on Rico would mean the world to me. Alfredo thought my goal of Grand Prix was very do-able, that Rico was a great horse, and that I had done a great job with him. Yay! He now has piaffe and passage and we're looking forward to another clinic with Alfredo!

Alfredo liked Rico's trick!

Learning the passage

This winter I moved Rico to Woodmyst, we had a minor issue with a splint and a less-than-minor back injury on my part but we're both doing better now. Grand Prix may not happen this year, but maybe next year.

Woodmyst allows for ample silliness at night

But the fact that it's even in the future at all is all because of my awesome trainer! And a really really amazing horse :)

He's the best! Such a hard worker.

In other news, Rico gets his hocks done (along with a lameness check up) on Wednesday! Then we're back to lessons next week in preparation for Greenville at the end of March. Hopefully all of our hard work over the winter will pay off with a clean Prix St George and a good score.