After I rode TC on Saturday, I had a little time before heading out to dinner, so I rode Rico. Poor Rico hasn't been out in a while and hasn't actually had a bit in his mouth in probably six months. I typically hop on him in the halter, bridleless, or the hackamore.
And then we go hang out with goats, Rico lives a rough life
I just recently sold my weymouth to a student and because of that, I have to order a new one (or put on the medium port that Rico hates). My new one isn't here yet because I don't really need it, so I threw Rico in the only snaffle bridle I had put together- TC's bridle.
Now, in the past, Rico has been a trickster in a fat snaffle like the one TC goes in. He takes it as a wonderful invitation to lean. It seems like all I had to do to get him super light in the snaffle is not ride him for months! I'm also working through my issues with rigidity on TC, so it's translating well to Rico too.
Hi mom! I'm going to yank out your shoulders
if you get on me because of reasons
I'll even lean on this dog!
I both love and hate (dislike is a better word) riding Rico these days. Obviously I love him to death, but riding him always makes me feel both greedy for the horse I had a year ago and sad that he's only serviceably sound. It's no fun to feel your horse struggle, even a little bit.
He does well, but he needs his hocks done obviously (last time was over a year ago). But to hell if I'm injecting a semi-retired horse's hocks so I can ride him every now and then for fifteen minutes. He's still happy to work, he just can't be ridden every single day for 45 minutes at the Grand Prix level. Fine, neither can I, my back sucks right now and my wrist is basically useless.
Back when we both were fit and awesome
This one time, Rico had abs
Rico was SO good for me the other day and genuinely seemed excited to work a little (A LITTLE). What a change from the horse who said NO to almost everything I suggested (okay to give him credit, he would argue that it was my fault for suggesting such terrible things like being forward and being straight).
We started with some trot work, playing in the lateral work and the quality of the trot. His regular trot is flat and short, possibly due to the pretty epic waddle he's developed after being just kind of fat for a while. But I was able to spice it up with a little passage. It got pretty impressive for a horse whose greatest accomplishment in the last nine months is not eating himself to death. The lateral work on that horse was so damn easy once as he was loosened up a bit. He just does shoulder-in, no body contortion or praying to the lateral work gods required. Weird. Half pass was not as strong but still so easy. I gotta get TC on the lateral work train.
I need to get on the lateral work train too
At the canter, I played with flying changes. Rico's changes are auto for a dressage horse even at this point. Set him up, swing your legs, try not to pull on his face. He threw in some two-tempis for funzies. I threw in two half pirouettes for funzies. He didn't think that was funzies and grunted the whole time. Pirouettes are fun! I miss playing with a school canter. TC just kind of runs like a maniac. Maybe one day we'll have a bit of collection in there somewhere.
Piaffe and passage still exist, with piaffe holding up better than passage. The passage is fine, it's just a bit uneven and flat. The piaffe feels just as good as it always has. Wtf indeed. This horse can piaffe for days.
It was extraordinarily fun to get back on Rico and play. There's something about a horse who is just completely yours, you know? Like for better or worse, I trained that animal. He knows all those tricks because of my hard, yet often misdirected and sometimes completely wrong, work. I'm so happy he retired sound enough to still go out and do some fun stuff.
The horse can piaffe. Not too enthusiastically, but he can do it.
Wow I never noticed but the shadow on his butt in this picture
makes it look like his loins suck, they don't
Sit! But don't stay...
In other AWESOME news, my brother happened to notice that one of my/our favorite comedians was coming to the area (not my area, my brother's, but they live in my old old town) in early November for a new show. On a weeknight. Starting at 8pm. An hour and a half away from my office. So I said fuck it and told him to get tickets for us. I'll be real tired at work the next day, but it's going to be SO WORTH IT. I just hope no one expects me to do anything other than write terrible unusable code that day. Maybe I can work from home and by home I mean my brother's couch. And by work I mean sleep.
Saturday was a bit of a whirlwind but I did manage to get TC out to prep him for our clinic with Barbi Breen-Gurley on Sunday (and I rode Rico! More on that later). He was great during that ride. I wasn't really sure what to expect from the clinic, which was Sunday. I had taken a lot of what had come up in the previous clinic and incorporated it. Mostly the slower trot and needing him to be straighter. Both of which he has been being quite good about since the clinic.
Sunday started out rough for poor TC. First, it was early enough where I was there before breakfast. Second, he's been kind of rude about getting in the trailer (but got in once he realized that breakfast was in there). Third, he spun his hay bag around in the trailer so he hadn't gotten much to eat. And fourth I wasn't there early enough to do much more than a quick walk-trot on the longe. Woops.
He was still a good boy though
He's cute
TC, that tail is a LITTLE MUCH sometimes
The lesson though, was EXCELLENT. I really love this clinician and am sad that I'm even further away from these clinics. However, if I can, I think riding with her again this fall/winter would be great because I could do both days and have TC stay overnight, which will prepare him for overnight shows. It's only marginally more expensive than a show, but it's a lot better of a learning opportunity than showing is at this point, so there we go.
In an attempt at savoring my last lesson for a while, I coerced my mom into coming down and video taping. So there are several ways to see how my lesson went. First video is a shortened video with just some good parts, just showing what we look like now without too much repetition (still a lot, but that's training level for ya). Second videos are the full lesson (well, what was videoed of them), complete with a great part where I forget how to ride a canter transition and we pick up the wrong lead a million times. Woops. You're welcome for putting my completely shit riding on this public blog, hopefully you can hear what Barbi is saying and learn from my idiocy.
Short (almost 4 minutes) video:
Long video with instruction (trot- 14 minutes):
Long video with instruction (canter and discussion- 11 minutes)
We started out okay. He was a bit tight and distracted. Barbi wanted to show me a technique she uses in the free walk to get him covering more ground, but TC was having none of it. So we went full Friesian into trot.
We did the same trot exercise as last time- spiraling in and out, really emphasizing the bend. He found the exercise much easier this time and in no time I had the trot I've been obsessing over for weeks. Barbi then put us to work with some leg yields at trot (which promptly ruined it's amazingness). We don't do a ton of leg yielding in trot, mostly because the ones in walk suck so much.
It wasn't bad but it wasn't good. I struggled with straightness in my shoulder and he struggled with tension while I didn't make things easier on him. The biggest takeaways from the leg yields were that I needed to look over my inside shoulder a bit and needed to keep my outside hand elastic.
Never go full friesian. If his ears were any more forward, they
would be covering his fucking eyes
Sometimes we go sideways
We took some time to talk about the rigidity. There's a brief synopsis at the end of the last video where we talk a little about the lesson. The thing that stuck in my brain the most is that she said "never turn the bit into a bar in his mouth." When I get stuck like that, the bit becomes this solid object. And TC will immediately lean against it.
She didn't mean that I should be constantly jiggling my hands around and moving the bit around. She meant that I need to let the bit hang in his mouth and use it more as a communication tool than just a way to make him do things. I've been trying to take that to heart more often and I think the visual of the bit in the mouth like that is going to really help.
Lots of bending
Who is this beefy horse??
For the canter, we started with some turns on the forehand (eliminated from the videos because we did SO many of them and they were all just terrible and no one wants to watch like 15 minutes of atrocious turns on the forehand). Barbi correctly deduced even before the canter that one of the things that makes the canter tricky is that he isn't quick off my aid.
Sure enough, in our trot to canter transition, it didn't matter if my aid was on time or not (although it SHOULD be and Barbi called me out on not riding as well as I could), TC wasn't quick enough to respond to it anyway. As I said above, we struggled with the left lead. He just gets tired. We don't do laps and laps of cantering and we don't sit on a circle at home. So having to do that makes him tired. TC thinks that if he gets tired on one lead, he can just switch to the other. So that's what he did. And we had to work through getting him on the correct lead again.
We can certainly cover a lot of ground
Love him
The other way was better. The right is always easier these days. In both directions though, I tend to get rigid at the canter and I'm SO glad I got a video to show myself that. Pictures really don't tell the whole story. I feel like my rigidity in the canter is less about me pulling and is just tension in my hip flexors and in my shoulders. I can tell you this- I feel like I CAN'T relax into the canter in the same way I can with Rico because TC will break. I'm constantly just hounding the canter forward on him that I can't take the tension out of those parts easily. Definitely something to work on. And in the mean time, no more rigidity no matter what.
We ended after the canter with Barbi gently harassing me to do TWO days in the clinic instead of just one. Yes ma'am- now that I have a job, I can legitimately save for clinics like this! I need a bit to recover from the vet check and pay off the horse, but I'm all about more clinics with her. I do want to ride with a few other trainers closer to my barn, but I freaking love riding with Barbi.
Such a big canter
Long side = racehorse
If I'd only shorten my reins sometimes
Major Takeaways
- TC needs to be more supple. I feel like we've made major leaps and bounds in the suppleness department in the last few months, but it's good to know that more is still necessary. Sometimes when you've been working on something really hard and there's a big change, it's easy to think that it's enough. Nope.
Barbi emphasized this especially when I got that amazing trot. She said that it's easy to just sit back and enjoy his trot but that doing that doesn't = training. I totally get it. I LOVE riding that trot and I'll ride it around and around the outside of the ring forever. But that trot breaks down in the lateral work and in transitions. Everything really. So yay I enjoy the trot, but the fact that the trot is so good is evidence that it DOESN'T need more training, the rideability needs training, and I need to be okay with breaking down the nice trot to TRAIN the horse. He's not a fucking carousel ride.
- TC needs to be quicker to respond to my aids. This is just his nature. I put an aid on and it takes a while for his big elephant body to get the aid to his brain, and then takes even longer for his baby brain to get that signal to his legs and for him to respond. I'm not sure what to do with this. I feel like it's partially just him, and that he's going to take a few years to get used to the quickness of it all. But I also agree with Barbi that it's stifling his training right now and that he does need an increase in urgency in terms of how he approaches his work.
- FEI young horse stuff is within our reach [if I push him- I added this part since yikes]. The 5-year-old test is basically Second-level-lite. Honestly, we could probably make it if it wasn't for the canter. The canter involves bits of counter canter and simple changes. I'm thinking that those will be too hard for him within the year, I mean come on, look at the state of his canter. Maybe he'll be ready for the 6-year-old test the year after, but that has flying changes so those would need to go on next winter instead of the following winter... I dunno, just fun to think about! I don't think we'd be all too competitive. And it's expensive so why pay to be bad at something? But that doesn't mean that I'm not totally drooling over those tests right now and playing with imaginary TC who is a lot better trained and more talented.
Now to keep this moment for longer (and rounder)
Not the most balanced animal just yet
He was so good
Overall I was SO pleased. My mom hadn't seen TC go in a while and hasn't seen Barbi teach. She said she was impressed both with how TC is going now and how Barbi was with him. Ali also came to watch and we agreed that Barbi really understood who TC was and how to push him. I also hinted heavily that if Ali and the barn I bought TC from were to breed TC's mom to a warmblood again, that I'd be 100% buying that animal. I just love his brain and I love how they start their horses. So we'll keep an eye out for that horse in a few years if they decide to go for it!
The thing about having a horse who had serious lamenesses on and off from 2009 until 2013 (and then less serious but still expensive and irritating injuries from 2013-2014) means that whenever anything is *not quite right* with TC, my brain thinks that it is OBVIOUSLY a severe tendon injury despite all signs pointing to it NOT being a severe tendon injury.
Hey remember when I used to ride my horse during the day? Weird.
So when I went to ride TC last night and he wasn't quite up to working hard. In the dark. Again. When there was new stuff in the arena to look at. And it was dark. And he was alone. And he's four. My first instinct was that clearly TC had sustained a soft tissue injury. Despite not being lame. Or having any swelling anywhere. Or literally showing any signs of anything other than being a little on the forehand and slightly distracted.
I honestly freaked. Like more than I normally would have. Maybe it was because my job required me to use my brain more that day so I used up all the logic and all that was left was crazy. Or that I left a touch late from my house that morning and the commute seemed to snowball and driving makes me crazy. Or that I decided to have a chocolate shake for dinner because I'm an adult who makes adult decisions and that sugar/chocolate is probably not the best fuel for non-crazy brain activity.
But I got all sad thinking about the idea of TC being hurt. Even with literally no symptoms other than wanting to play with a tarp and run around on his forehand rather than work hard.
Such big ears
After the sudden shock to my system that TC is indeed a horse and that horses sometimes get injured, I realized that I needed to just sit back and accept things better (hahaha I am NOT good at that). Sometimes things don't go as planned. Sometimes horses go lame. SOMETIMES HORSES ARE JUST NOT WANTING TO WORK IN THE FUCKING DARK AND THEY GET A LITTLE ON THE FOREHAND MEGAN CALM THE FUCK DOWN HE IS NOT BROKEN.
But the nice thing with TC is that I have no agenda. Sure I'd love for him to take me back to Grand Prix, or the FEI levels, or to Third level, or just back in the show ring. But the thing I love most about this horse is not his potential (because while he does have some, he's no ticket to the CDI ring- my next big massive pipe dream of a goal), it's his mind. And if he were to get hurt, his mind would still be there. I would still have a horse to play with, to teach silly tricks to, to trail ride. And if he was so lame that he couldn't be ridden or couldn't be competed, there are options that I have for him. I'm lucky to be in a situation where he is not my only option for riding horses.
HOWEVER, obviously he was not lame, I was severely overreacting. Let's move on, shall we? Just be thankful you weren't in the car with me last night on the way home. Good lord am I just the MOST crazy person sometimes.
He is so cute
TC was happy to see that NEW THINGS were in the arena last night. His favorite by far was the tarp. For a horse who was afraid of a tiny flag when he was being started, he's turning out to be a brave little thing. He dragged me right over and stuffed his face into the tarp. He then pawed a little at it, snorted, licked it, and was done and off to explore better things like buckets, barrels, mounting blocks, and cones. He looked at the tarp once while we were working, less of a spook and more of a look of longing. Why can't I play with that? Why must we work? I think this horse is going to need toys.
For the first time in a long time, TC wasn't much into work. Normally he thinks his job is the best job ever and that I'm the best person ever. He'd be the MOST annoying person to have dinner with.
Things started off fine. I was distracted by my phone and was kind of half assing my riding a bit. I did make him march and do some walk halt transitions off my seat. Then we did some lateral work from the get go. Normally we do more trotting, then during our first walk break work on leg yield/shoulder-in.
We used to be able to ride next door too, ugh
Last night wasn't a normal ride, so I'm not going to jump to any conclusions about where he's at in his training. He was VERY low when we started trotting after we did our lateral work. I let him stretch for a while and it was actually quite pleasant to see that he is beginning to overcome his natural high neck set.
But then he ended up using it against me. He curled for the first time in months and months (normally he goes hollow or retracted, curling was kind of new) and my first instinct was to bring my hands up, which was not going to help matters. Frustrating! Luckily we have Barbi this weekend to fix us.
To make matters worse, for the life of me I couldn't get the horse off the forehand. Granted, our ride was 20 minutes long and most of it occurred when it was so dark that I couldn't really see what was going on. I tried to tell myself that riding should be all about feel, but optic flow REALLY helps you determine if your horse is in a working or lengthened trot, since TC does not change his tempo in between the two (which is good) and it's honestly not a large difference right now. He DOES go on the forehand in the lengthened trot, so without the subtle visual cues as to how fast we were going, he could have easily been doing his lengthened trot the whole time while I freaked out about whether being on the forehand and curling = injury.
The canter was pretty good. The left lead was amazing, and it even occurred at the darkest time, I kept thinking we were accidentally going to run into the fence! The right was good too. He's struggling with steering a little in both directions still, but he's much stronger and much easier to put on the bit. Excellent.
And not have to use lights to untack
Overall I was pleased that he DID work even if it wasn't perfect. The horse never says no. But it's further proof that I have an incredible amount of baggage left over from Rico. Rico is/was an amazing horse, and I am so grateful for what he has done for me, but he put me through a lot. He was injured very often and he said no in almost every ride. So every time TC doesn't feel 100% on board with working, I'm convinced that he is either injured or getting sour. Or both.
Here's hoping that he stays sound and sane for long enough to let me relax a bit about these things. Although it did make me start looking at horse insurance again. I think I want to get insurance on him sooner rather than later, just for peace of mind. It saved Rico's career after all.
If you guys have any insurance suggestions, please let me know! I use Equisure for my trainer insurance and I think Rico was insured by Hallmark. But I'm up for suggestions.
Despite having to stay late for a meeting yesterday (which put me working normal hours), I managed to survive the commute during normal working hours to ride TC.
I wasn't at the barn until almost 7 . It was already getting dark! And while there are lights in the barn, there are no lights in the arena. I'm no stranger to riding in the dark though. In the summers with Rico, I'd turn all the house lights off, then ride in the moonlight sometimes as late as 10:30pm since I was at school in the mornings and that was the only time when it was cool enough to ride.
This guy got ridden at night a lot
TC, however, hasn't really experienced riding in the dark, but he was fine. He definitely was a little spookier than normal. By spookier than normal though, I mean that he spooked once. I'm spoiled by this horse. He's been a nice ease back into the world of baby horses, I just hope he stays this way forever!
We started out with our normal walk to halt transitions off the seat. His walk starts so lazy that I tend to ride these on a pretty light rein at first, then start to work him rounder as he stops being so sticky. They were much better (no rooting) but still not all that straight. He really wants to fall sideways into them. But I appreciated not being yanked at so that was nice.
The trot was good, but there was another horse in the arena and TC thought it'd be great to try to follow that horse all over. He now has the strength to really motor around the arena in a lengthened trot, which is fun but it needs to be MY idea and not his. Luckily the horse is ever so responsive to half halts from the seat so I nipped that in the bud and we almost immediately had a really great trot. He was light in the bridle and very maneuverable.
Moonlight pony
The lightness is starting to concern me slightly, it's not that I don't like it, it's just that it becomes more difficult to determine whether he is on his underneck or not. If he is, it's very slight though, since I am not feeling that tension in his back at all. So that's a good question for Barbi this weekend. He feels through most of the time, but when I dropped his poll a little, he felt better, so I rode like that in hopes that this meant that he was releasing his underneck more. It's a very small change (since he IS through, he's just using his topline at 95% rather than 100%) that I probably wouldn't care to mention in my instruction for a while, but I care more when I have to ride the horse every other day!
We did a little leg yield and shoulder-in at the walk. The leg yield is getting good, though still slow off my leg. He struggles in that, I'm glad I started it so early, by the time he has to do it in the show ring, he's going to have at least a year and a half of leg yielding under his belt. The leg yield was a little more resistant off my right leg than left, so I had to sacrifice some straightness to get the crossover I wanted. He's responsive enough to the straightening aids now that I'm not worried about straightening it later.
The shoulder-in was good, I actually rode him in first position at the trot for a lot of our warm up because he was being lazy with his right hind. It makes a massive difference with him, which is really fun to feel.
Pretty sunset at my old barn
No time for much lateral work at the trot because at this point it was basically dark. So we cantered. The canter was actually pretty great! He was on the bit in both directions. To the left, I still can't relax 100%, I feel like he'll break at any point. But he's coming round that direction, which is a huge plus. The right was great, except he was losing rhythm and getting slightly lateral so I had to zip him forward. In general, he was reluctant to put his right hind under him that ride and I think that was why he was losing rhythm.
Back in trot, I couldn't help but want to play with lengthenings. He is always so powerful after canter so I wanted to experiment. I've been using the diagonals in the short court and it's just enough room to get a good lengthening but not so much to get him off balance. He was super game, though showed me that his tendency in the lengthenings is going to be to curl a little. He got low and fell on the forehand. That's fine, I have ways to fix it. I almost prefer that to the hollow lengthening that Rico would give me, since I don't like to sit that shit.
Milky way over my parents' barn
Finally it was just too dark. I managed to get about 30 minutes in, which was plenty. I'm really looking forward to the clinic this weekend and our move next weekend! The hellish commute is almost over, phew.
Sunday morning I got ballsy and hauled TC out to our usual trail facility for his first ever trail ride by himself. It's really important to me to be able to trail ride alone. I love trail riding and don't like to depend on other people to baby sit. Even if I am technically on a baby...
More beach pictures!
So many birds
One thing to know about me is that my fear issues are worst in the open. I boarded at a place when I was younger with a lot of trails on a hill and had a horse who spooked sideways, lost footing, and we nearly went down the steep side. That, plus just simply riding a LOT more often in the arena vs in the open, makes me a bit more apprehensive on the trails. At this point, I don't really get scared/fearful anymore, but I'm definitely more careful.
I decided to go to the place we've been most. My plan was to get out there and turn around if it started to go bad. I really had no idea what to expect.
I couldn't get the hay bag to hang correctly in the trailer so poor, innocent TC had to sit in the trailer for 20 minutes without food. It was a travesty. When I stopped at a stoplight, I actually had to roll down the window to yell back to him to stop pawing.
Love
Such a fun day
He came out of the trailer relaxed, especially after I gave him the hay bag. He whinnied once but generally was fine until I had to wrestle his bridle on him.
We had only one incident with spooking and it happened right away. The horse has been around dogs his whole life, but apparently has never seen a very tired (and wheezy) french bulldog. TC was not sure WHAT that thing was but he was positive it wasn't a dog and that it was dying.
Other than screaming the entire time, he was great. He was perfect about opening all the gates (which we've never done since we're always with expert trail horses who just open them for us), he was very confident about passing bikes, and he even walked (cautiously) over the little bridge without much hesitation.
He was like "WHY MOM, WHY"
His long mane is so silly
Most of the time we were on a loose rein, I was able to mess around on my phone and take pictures. It was so fun! I think he appreciated being able to go at his own pace. The horse loves to walk slow. He's so freakishly slow on the trails and he ends up being left behind. He doesn't mind getting left behind but then my trail rides with other people become less about socializing and more about kicking and kicking my lazy horse forward. I'm sure he thinks that sucks.
I love my pony! Except that he said no to the trailer coming home. I had to actually take the end of the rope and hit him! Poor pony. He got grain and the rest of his hay bag when he got home though. And when I came back to put him away, he had played in his water and was soaked but very happy.
Such a nice day
So fun!
This week I'm going to make major attempts at keeping this horse going because I just signed up for another clinic with Barbi this coming weekend. Then it's just a few more days until moving day for the pony!
So no news isn't good news in terms of my wrist. The x-ray came back negative according to my regular doctor. I'm going to see a specialist soon. It remains painful in all aspects of my life except riding horses. So I mean it's basically the most convenient type of injury when you're the sort of person who would ride through any sort of pain. I have a cumbersome brace to wear all the time, but I'm mostly wearing it while driving and at night since I can't do anything else with it.
Finally some beach pictures!
Kinda foggy but it was nice and cool
On Saturday I did all my chores in the morning and then zipped down to ride TC. It was already SO hot, so much for the cooler weather we had last week. Oh well. Rico already has his big thick coat coming in. TC doesn't have as much fluff, but I know he'll be hairy enough to warrant a clip. That will be interesting.
Once again, I got a few whinnies when I got there. I talked to Ali and apparently TC is getting pretty demanding of the people who come into his pasture. He expects to be brought in to eat by anyone and everyone who steps foot in that pasture. He followed Ali around, harassing her for carrots one day when she went into the pasture to give HER horse a carrot. He really doesn't understand that other people don't care about him as much as I do. He's such a little kid. Definitely the center of his own world.
He was a bit of a loon tacking up. He was very impatient with me, he kept poking me and trying to leave for the arena without me. I had to hold the whip while bridling him. Then I tortured him by talking to Ali for 30 minutes while holding him all tacked up. He was frustrated at first and kept walking through me, but then he realized that he wasn't going to win and he ended up just sticking his head in my lap and I pet him until I was done chatting. It's good for him to learn to be patient! Rico will stand for hours, whenever Tracey was late, I'd park him in the corner and go sit with her and he'd just nap until I came back to get him.
The best trail horse
He hated the waves so much
When we finally got into the ring, he was totally fine, he never seems to let stuff that happens outside the ring affect him in any way. He was very eager to do turns on the forehand, he really likes them. He would halt well off my seat, then start oozing sideways. I had to really drill in the difference and catch him with my leg. I'm trying to teach him the word "stand" since he needs to figure that out for picking feet and bridling anyway. The turns on the forehand were really good though!
The trot was great to the right and overbent to the left. As usual for the last few rides. It's definitely different than our usual rigidity to the left, I don't think I like it since it's kind of a weakness of mine when going left. I worked really hard to push him into the left rein and get his left hind engaged rather than pull on the left rein as I'm always so tempted to do. He was very good about it and we developed a really great trot after that.
So fun
Such a cool view
As we were trotting, he had stepped way up into the bridle. The connection was good, but what I would call a heavy connection from him. Now, I love this type of connection, but not everyone wants that much in your hand. It's not that I like horses that lean, no, there is a difference between a horse who is connected and a horse who is leaning, even if the weight you feel in your hand is the same. But I like that feeling.
However, not everyone will like this or will be capable of riding it AND I want to work on riding lighter just for my own riding education since Rico was always IN the bridle, as are most of the horses I ride. The nice thing about TC is that he is as light or heavy as his rider is.
So when he is "heavy," it means that I'm riding him that way. All I have to do is lighten up my connection (not drop him, but lighten) and he matches me. I love it, its a great reminder to me to ride him very light, but it's nice that he isn't offended by being ridden a little heavier. Basically anything I say goes. Hopefully that lasts forever. I feel like I have a preteen kid who is just so sweet and nice but a terrible teenager is looming in the shadows as he realizes that he doesn't have to agree with me all the time.
An accurate representation of how excited they both were
The birdpocalypse occurred while we were on the beach
We did some leg yielding at the walk, then some shoulder-in. The shoulder-in was actually pretty amazing. Definitely some of the first REAL shoulder-ins he's done. We've kind of faked it until now with a leg yield-y thing, but I really felt him sit down a little on the inside hind in both directions. He's ever so steady in the shoulder-in as well, erring on the side of a bit of shoulder-in entwickeln, where he wants to fall to the rail (I do it on quarter-line) rather than to the inside of the arena. Awesome, I hate the inside drifting.
After the shoulder-in, we immediately trotted and then cantered. Holy shit. The canter was amazing. We went right first, and it was a REAL canter. Not running, not unbalanced, just a confident, relaxed canter. We did circles, which were actual legitimate circles! It was the first time that I really felt like a horse show at Training level wasn't completely out of the question for next year. It's seriously been feeling like we're never going to get the canter.
He's so fat and out of shape but I love him
Pathway behind the beach
The left lead wasn't bad either. Definitely better than normal- rounder, more balanced, and more rideable. But not as good as the right. That will hopefully catch up soon!
I just kind of let him be done after that. It was hot and it was feeding time. I've gotten in the habit of brushing his tail out after rides. This tail is ridiculous. When brushed out, it's over a foot wide. And he grows it so fast, I've had to trim it a TON since I started with him. Oh and my scissors won't go through it very easily, I'm going to have to use my clippers next time.
