Alfredo Hernandez Clinic (and Intermediare I Pictures!)

I finally have pictures edited from Friday! I'm working on a whole bunch more too from this clinic and from riding a friend's horse. It was actually good that poor boyfriend had to work this week rather than us going camping, since I have 300 pictures to edit. Yikes. But anyway, on to the pictures which I'll use to break up a big long post about the Alfredo clinic I went to!

Up centerline 

Such a great horse

All done!

First though, an update on Rico's health:

Welp, I changed Rico's bit, workout routine, my way of riding him, the number of days I do dressage, and how long he works. He's also on ranitidine and a diet with lower levels of grain and higher levels of fat, and...

He's feeling mildly better.

So I'm planning on getting him scoped next week while I'm at the lake with boyfriend's family. I'll have no internet and no phone and my horse will get a tube shoved up his nose and down into his stomach to take a look around and see whether he has ulcers or not. If so, I've decided that unless they're incredibly severe, I'm going to do a treatment. If they come back, he's retired, but hopefully we can keep him comfortable through the fall and then he's retired!

Warm up pictures are significantly better than the indoor
show pictures

More warming up

With this slight improvement, I decided to go to the Alfredo clinic Tuesday and Wednesday. I figured that if he has ulcers, they're feeling better with the ranitidine and change in diet. If he has to be retired, at least this (like our I1) is one last fun thing to do with him. I also figured that if it wasn't ulcers, I'd very much regret not going since Alfredo won't be back until September.

Smiling after he did tempis up centerline

Hanging out with the judge

We still have a questionable medium trot

Alfredo remembered us from November and was pleased to see how good Rico looked in his pi/pa since last time. In November, Rico had his first clinic with Alfredo and it was his first time doing passage ever and first time doing a real piaffe (we had done half steps up until then). Since then, we've gotten a pretty decent passage on him (still working out the kinks), and the piaffe is coming along. He also has semi-decent walk-passage, passage-canter, and pi/pa transitions.

Tuesday we worked the piaffe and passage independently. In the piaffe, I need to insist he does it on the spot now. Not a lot of steps, and in the show ring I can let him scooch forward a bit, but at home, it's on the spot for 5-6 steps and then out.

In the passage, Rico needs more lift, but not that much more. Alfredo warned me. Don't make the horse passage BIG, you do that if you have years to develop a passage. We have several months at the most. He said play it safe and get a six- Rico needs to be reliable and even, but not flashy. I totally agree, I don't want an uncontrollable passage in the ring, I want something rideable and something that I don't worry about being able to steer.

We warmed up with a little passage at the show, it's not big
but it's reliable!

Half pass zig zag!

More warm up passage

Wednesday we played with one tempis and transitions. Alfredo was so funny about me in the ones. He first told me to canter a bit for him and then told me that Rico didn't need me that much. He said "put your reins in one hand and do lead changes" so I did. No biggie, Rico has good changes. Then he said "give me one one!" and I was like hah yeah that's not happening.

But Rico did them, actually better with one hand than with two! Alfredo laughed at me and told me that Rico didn't want me so involved in the ones. Point taken.

Then we did transitions in and out of piaffe and passage, then some walk to passage transitions. My biggest problem was me taking my leg of between the piaffe and passage. That meant that Rico would halt, then do a halt to passage transition. Woops. I fixed that!

More like a reining spin than a right pirouette but we are
making progress!

Better in the arena!

Left one is far superior

Much better than the right

At the end, Alfredo said that he thought our piaffe and passage wasn't too far off from Grand Prix. He said to remember that it's all a learning experience, that I shouldn't worry too much about the score because it depends so much on the judge anyway (he said judges have different opinions on what is a good piaffe and passage, more so than they do with the other movements) and that I should go for the experience and bring him the test next time and we'll figure out how to bring scores up.

I'm with him for the most part. There's part of me who just wants to GO and if we score like shit, say "oh well!" and keep working. But the other part of me looked up my record last night and I have only ever scored in the 50s three times in my life. Twice with Rico (once at first level when I had hurt my back and went off course twice; once at third level when it was so windy that the arena letters fell into the arena along one long side and we had to make due without a long side) and once was my Grand Prix on Leo. Both of the scores on Rico were 59s... So it would be a new-ish experience to score so low on Rico, but I think I'd be fine with that.

More judge chatting

So cute!

But with how things have been going, I'm hoping we will end up making it to Grand Prix this year regardless of the score :) Fingers crossed that whatever is going on (physical or behavioral) is fixable. Especially if it was fixable in time for the first chance at the Grand Prix which is on July 13th, just over a month away- yikes. Second chance is three weeks later in August so we may wait for that one.

Alright, off to do some homework now. Yep. Homework. Didn't I finish my semester a couple weeks ago? Two glorious weeks of break. Now I'm taking a month long Programming in R class. Grad school never ends!!

Parents' new trailer which Rico isn't much of a fan of...

Such a good horse!