Does What He Wants

Saturday after my long day I still managed to ride Rico. I sort of had to convince myself to do it though. Nothing like the Fitbit hanging over my head, reminding me that I spent the majority of the day sitting to motivate me to move.

I rode him after dinner and it was an awesome ride. Rides have been hit or miss in the last couple weeks with Rico. Whether it's his joints/neck pain, the fact that I've had more not-Megan-riders on him lately, or just me being a crazy person, I don't know. But he's been a little extra lazy and he occasionally throws in unclean changes, which is very odd.

But Saturday he came out to play and I was happy to have my horse back.

Rico's new best friend came cantering up to us

One thing I did do is use the BOT quickwraps for tacking up. I'm planning on using them with TC- basically putting them on the moment I get to the barn and leaving them on until after I put the saddle on. So I figured Rico could use them too, he's getting the star treatment until the dumb baby horse comes home and takes all his stuff.

I got on and let him zip past the arena and out to the road like he always tries to do. We came back to the arena after walking around the corner, but he got to have a moment of victory.

In the arena I mostly wanted to work on my position. We're only a little more than two weeks away from my first rides on TC (YAY) so I'm hoping to really work on myself leading up to that. I actually have now put my stirrups down a full two holes since I started riding TC, one hole since this fall. I raised them in the first place because on young big moving horses who buck, I need shorter stirrups. As he was better about being round and not darting randomly around the arena, I was able to lower them, but I never got them down to where they once were.

And when I got back on Rico, I was so used to the shorter stirrups that I was riding with short stirrups on all horses. So they're back down to where they belong! I'll still probably put them up a hole when I ride TC for a few weeks, but I'm hoping to be down on hole 13 permanently fairly soon.

So cute!

As always, we started in canter. He felt super good in the bridle and right on my seat, although not super forward. We did a few single flying changes and they felt good. The left-right change tends to get real crooked/kicking and so we worked a little on that in warm up.

Then we played a little in a forward-moving piaffe. I don't want him to have to do it on the spot too much anymore since it puts unnecessary pressure on his hocks. Piaffe is fun but it's not my favorite, I mostly do it to get him engaged and thinking more collected, and an on the spot piaffe isn't necessary for that.

Passage though, that is my favorite so we did a little bit of that. He lost the walk to passage a little bit, he takes a trot step before really getting the height. And with a couple of non-Megan rides, the tempo got a bit too fast so I brought it slower, which he seemed to appreciate actually. I think people who haven't done the pi/pa a lot struggle with how SLLLOOOWWWW the passage is. It really doesn't cover a ton of ground, and the tempo is quite slow.


And as much as the piaffe and passage are two of Rico's best movements, the reality is that he learned to passage in November of 2013 and then we stopped really training it in October of 2014. So he only has a year of training on them. This means that riding it poorly results in him changing the way he does it, vs say a shoulder-in that he's had on him for most of his dressage career so you can fuck that up all you want and I'll still be able to get a good one out of him without working on it.

But I don't mind, I'm not trying to compete this horse anymore and honestly the look on peoples' faces when they first sit his passage and hearing my friend tell the rest of our friends at dinner the other night how wonderful and trained my horse is makes rides like this where I sort of have to pick up the pieces totally worth it!

They were all cuddly, so cute!

Back in canter I mostly worked on my position, getting my leg to be a little longer, which is hard for me since it wants to creep up to the block. Rico is super about letting me drop my leg down, as it makes him collect more since that's how I would always work on collection. So we played in a few different canters while I made myself stop tipping forward with my left shoulder (a new-ish issue I noticed while riding a horse at my new barn that has mirrors) and worked to not sink into any sort of rotation with my hips. Sometimes I get a little hula-dancer-y at the canter. Inside seatbone forward, emphasize the forward and back, don't fucking wiggle.

We also did the tempi changes and for the first time in a while, Rico was kind of a shit about them. Not in the old-horse-losing-strength way, but in the way that used to drive Tracey and I nuts. Here's how it would go:

Tracey: show me the threes
Me: rides a line of threes
Rico: throws in a two for funzies
Tracey: Megan, there was a two in there, do the threes
Me: I'm trying
Rico: bahahaha
Me: goes back across the diagonal
Rico: starts the twos before I even ask for any changes
Tracey: MEGAN NO, THE THREES DO THE THREES
Me: I AM TRYING I AM NOT ASKING FOR TWOS
Rico: lol

So I headed across the diagonal and rode the threes and he ended with a two. I thought that my aid was probably off so I came around again and he STARTED in twos. I don't want to get after him, I mean no one cares now whether he's doing twos or threes. I kept laughing, but was also mildly frustrated with him. Damnit Rico, I talk about how trained and perfect you are and then you pull shit like this.

So cute

In the end we walked down the road and visited Rico's new best friend. It was such a fun ride. We don't get rides like that all the time, mostly because I don't think I've quite determined how many rides a week and in what order I can do to maximize rides like this. Too many rides a week and he gets lazy, too little rides a week and he gets unfit. Trail rides make his coffins hurt so I limit those. It's a balance that I haven't put much effort into figuring out. But when things come together like on Saturday, he's super fun.