A Cold Day in Hell

My lesson with Heidi on Tuesday was absolutely amazing. I've been feeling that Rico and I have been a little "off" recently and now I feel 100% back on the right track. The lesson gave me a LOT of confidence in my riding and in Rico's abilities. Let me go through it...

We talked a bit in the beginning and I told her that I really just wanted to get him going better and then evaluate my/our goals. I told her about the straightness, energy, and roundness problems I had been having.

Incidentally, I bought Rico from Heidi almost 10 years ago

 

Teenage Megan and 8 year old Rico

She handed me a different whip, kind of like a driving whip (I'm going to acquire one), and within 30 seconds and only two snaps of that whip, we fixed the energy problem. The problem was, big surprise, that I nagged and used the whip too much. For the first time in months and months, Rico was reliably in front of my leg and I must have looked like a kid in a candy store grinning from ear to ear. I can't describe the feeling I got when he was like that, every step felt light and easy, like all I had to do was regulate his step. I could half halt and bring him up into the fanciest trot I've ever felt, and I could soften forward and add a touch of leg to get a medium trot. He was no longer stressed about the whip, because all it took was a light touch with the lash and he was back to me.

With that additional energy and responsiveness, the straightness and connection problems went away. He wasn't falling over his right shoulder because he was so engaged, he stretched into contact because I was sending enough energy over his back for him to remain connected.

I'm fucking buying one of those whips, it's going to sleep with me in my bed. That could be interpreted in the wrong way...

Alright so five minutes into the lesson, we had fixed everything that I had wanted to fix. What now? Well, Heidi wanted to see his piaffe and passage. Over a third of the Grand Prix test is piaffe and passage, so if my goal is the Grand Prix, he needs to be solid.

 She put us on a circle around her and asked me to put him in piaffe. She had a whip and he was already way in front of me so he gave me a REALLY good piaffe. Then we walked and put him into passage. It was a small circle so he struggled at first, but actually it really paid off because he got a lot more even having to keep his lazy right hind under him in order to turn.

Heidi said "okay so he piaffes and passages, why no Grand Prix?" And I was like "well, everything else is shit" and she said "we can build everything else around it, it will be a cold day in hell the next time you have a horse that piaffes and passages like this"

I wish someone had been there to capture the look on my face.

I mean he just looks like a Grand Prix horse, right?

We then decided that for the next couple of weeks, I'd work on the basics (lower neck/rounder, more energy) while we examined the movements. We still had time in the lesson, so we decided to look at the Grand Prix zig zag. WOO!

We started with some basic half passes and Heidi noted a few of the things I've struggled with- he gets hollow in the left half pass, and the right is steeper than the left. Then I did the previous Intermediare II zig zag (before it was taken out) which is 4-8-8-4 (start with 4 steps left, then 8 steps right, then 8 steps left, then 4 steps right back to centerline). It went well! I occasionally miscounted and it definitely ended right of centerline but other than that, great!

Then we moved on to the GP zig zag (3-6-6-6-3) which was tough. It turned out that I would start it WAY steep and then get behind him as I tried to maintain that steepness. I did it into the mirror and by the end I had one that we would have probably gotten at least a 6 on! I was so happy!

Yep

More time was still left over so we looked at the pirouettes. The biomechanic is wrong in both directions, and that's my fault. I put the haunches in. Once as we had the biomechanic though, the left one was perfect. The right one was still a struggle, he's just weaker that way. Heidi said to work on the walk pirouettes in the same way to practice the biomechanic but not stress him out. She said she'd get on him to give him more confidence in the canter pirouettes.

She was impressed with his sitting ability, which was cool! I've always heard that Rico wouldn't collect very well, but it has turned out to not be true. He's not a huge fan, but he'll sit right down when you insist.

The fanciest

Overall I was nearly crying with joy by the end. I haven't had a lesson like that in a LONG time. I left feeling downright excited to ride, and every ride since then has been really fun! We agreed not to do the lesson on Thursday since I have enough to work on and I just bought a new computer (YAY), but I'm going to ride with her every week and she'll ride him twice while I'm out of town in July.