Developing Quickness (via Dreamy Trot Destruction)

Urgency is not something that exists in TC's world. It's not that he's lazy or unresponsive. He is very enthusiastic about doing the right thing, he wants to work for his rider, he responds to all of my aids. It's easy to classify him as a lazy, unresponsive horse because of his slow response time. But I'm reluctant to do so because I've had a lazy unresponsive horse (Rico) and they are very different horses.

Rico's spirit animal

I would call TC methodical. He wants to truly understand something and do it very carefully. When you ask him to trot, he immediately responds by setting himself up (in his own way, sometimes this isn't what I want though haha) and then, only when he is totally prepared does he actually trot. That set up and execution is slow, but he responds (or starts to respond) quickly. When you ask him to turn on the forehand, he immediately responds. But he responds by slowly picking up his inside hind leg, carefully placing it under his body, then slowly picking up his outside hind leg and placing it carefully to the outside.

The difficulty of training him comes not from his level of responsiveness, it comes from the lack of urgency. He seems to be a perfectionist (although an often misdirected one, I think I know someone like that...). He wants to take his time to get it right.

Rico, on the other hand would just say no. Ask him to trot and he sucks back against your leg. There is no set up, there is nothing careful about it. He says no thanks, I'd rather not. Ask him to leg yield (as a young horse at least) and you get a brick wall of abdomen against your leg. He says NO SIDEWAYS SHUFFLING.

So do I want more responsiveness from TC? Suuure, I mean horses can always be more responsive (vs reactive- horses should not be reactive). I want him hanging on my every word, already set up for his leg yields and his transitions before I ask for them so he can respond easily. What I want most though, is a little bit of urgency. Not tension, just that he feels like there's a time limit. I worked on this on Tuesday.

Like this but more urgent off the aids

The biggest thing I discovered in my ride on Tuesday was that my aids slow down with him. I expect him to be slow off the aid so I slow my aids down to meet him. Long leg aids, long rein aids. The number of seconds that my leg is on him is way too many. If I want him to think that this is urgent, I need to make sure I'm riding it as such.

The next thing I did was put a bit of tension back into my seat. I'm really good at making horses a bit hot, but I've valued relaxation over TC's topline so much that I had to calm my ass down a bit. Time to bring fire ass back, which is I think what my BFF called it years ago when she couldn't ride a horse I had been riding (and her old horse, who she rode with hammerhead spurs, tried to murder me because I lit him up so much).

So I sat with a little more urgency, used quicker aids, used shorter quicker taps with the whip... and it worked okay. I did some leg yields like this and TC got a lot of praise when he was quicker. The turns on the forehand were really good, though totally off the bit. We ended with some walk-trot transitions, which blew TC's poor little mind. I would ask once for the trot, then once as I noticed that his brain was starting to acknowledge the aid, I tapped him to say "hurry up!"

Weeee

TC thought that meant GO REALLY FAST so off we went in a HUGE trot. I had to actually pull on him to get him back to walk. Frustration. My once dreamy quiet responsive trot was now this ugly charging downhill thing.

He just didn't understand, poor guy. I worked hard to keep it all very positive. He got a lot of praise. He did get better about it, but we never really got what I had wanted- quicker to the aids but remaining relaxed. It's good to know that we have access to both, we just need to work on it at the same time.

Since TC moves so soon, it's unlikely that I'll be working on this for a bit. He's going to need some adjustment time. I'm planning on doing some ground work, longeing, and riding with the focus on relaxation and building what we had at his current barn back up.

Hello new paddock! See you this weekend

I'm a little stressed about the move, primarily because I desperately want to like this barn (due to the affordability and larger paddocks than every other barn that has openings), but it's so different from what I'm used to. It's mostly western and very low key, so I'm not sure how the people are going to be, how well the footing is going to be maintained, and all that. My current barn is mostly western and the footing isn't the greatest and I'm totally fine... but it's always easier to accept faults in things that are known rather than unknown.

Can I also say that I was NOT in a good mood for the ride on Tuesday (the ride I'm describing) and that this horse is just so accommodating. I was seriously feeling like shit by the time I got on him just because of reasons and he was SO sweet. He stuck his nose in my arms while I was tacking him up and he listened when I got annoyed at his normal baby shuffling and told him to stand still. He did everything I asked undersaddle and just generally was a breath of fresh air after a frustrating day. I know a certain bay horse who would have taken advantage of me a bit. It reminded me of what Lauren wrote earlier this week and I'm just so grateful for this little horse's brain.