Finding Our Show Trot

Tuesday's ride was probably the best ride I've had on my own yet. I've been feeling slightly desperate for a lesson with a dressage trainer to give me some direction, but my lesson on Monday with my trainer gave me a lot to work on. I'm thinnnnking I might try to get a lesson next week with Tracey, fingers crossed!

Wandering around the ranch

We started with some work in the round pen. A new horse had been added to the turnouts and they brought out the one horse who is a shit starter to put him next to the new horse while I was walking TC. I kept TC marching along, working on halting (the aid for which broke overnight) and reining back (which is always hard). The horses exploded and were cantering around, but all that work that I've done with trainer helped both of us handle it totally fine. TC never got upset and I didn't get nervous, back off my aids, or over ride him.

We played with the transitions to the right with much success. The canter felt really great, quite relaxed and not too humpy/bucky. The left though... ugh.

He immediately had a stick up his ass about going left. He gave me two options- we could canter on the spot, or we could buck. I was irritated with him, since he doesn't do this in any other arena. So we had it out. I stuck some pretty big bucks, and there was only one time where I thought I might come off. Woops. But man he was good after that.

We headed out and toward the dressage court and we ran into trainer. I told him about the bucking but that I think I figured it out. He gets TC on Friday because I'm out of town, so hopefully he can continue working on that obnoxious behavior.

Unfortunately in the dressage court was someone I wasn't thrilled about riding with, so I headed to the covered arena. In there was a sweet little western horse. Excellent.

I put polos on his hind legs- he let me put them on and then did
this for a while

We started in the warm up trot so I could gain access to his shoulders and back and then I picked him up into the show trot. I touched on this in Tuesday's post and JenJ wanted expansion, so here we go.

Long about First/Second level, I was taught to warm the horse up in warm up gaits before bringing them into their show gaits. The point was to stretch the back out a bit, get the throughness, establish connection over the back, etc, before you really put any pressure on them to carry themselves. Put them a bit low (not curled though) and start checking off the first few rungs of the training scale. Really focusing on suppleness, throughness, and connection, as well as addressing rhythm/tempo/energy. And straightness, which at this point with TC is majorly connected to throughness and suppleness anyway.

Then once as you warm up, you bring the horse up in front- poll the highest point (though relative elevation rather than absolute- basically I don't lift my hands up and pull his face up), lifting through the shoulders, and becoming more uphill- while engaging the hind quarters- hind end under and, in TC's case, change the mechanic of the hind end from pushing to carrying since he naturally wants to push. Then add expression with increased power and collection. The idea is to maintain all the basics from warm up into the show gaits.

TC is just starting this. It's honestly just a change in frame at this point to make it easier for him to understand sitting down a bit. After months of encouraging him to go down down down, he's maintaining throughness in his more uphill place, and I can now start to work on the mechanic in his hind legs. Once as I get a bit of passage in the trot, I can get that super flashy front end coming out of the base of the neck and hind leg snapping up under him. But for now, we're just changing the mechanic, which is easier in the show trot.

It's pretty at the ranch at night 

We played a bit with that, and TC felt excellent. The mirrors helped me out a lot, since I could time my aids better to get his hind leg under him a little more. He felt super soft up there, though I could tell every now and then I'd lose him to his underneck. So we did a lot of transitions between warm up and show trot to make sure that he wasn't getting tired and trying to find other mechanics to hold himself in that position.

The canter is obviously not in a place where I can distinguish between the two yet. We're still working on roundness and straightness. It felt really good though. He's still really struggling with the straightness, but I worked super hard to get the softness that I had gotten in Monday's lesson. Hands together, use the left rein but not holding it, sit on the right seatbone, oh my god. But it's still so freaking hard for both of us.

In the mirror, there were even more moments than last time where TC looked great (there weren't that many last time). The canter at least looks better than it feels most of the time. The left is still the problem direction, but it has good moments, and actually the right is looking and feeling good a lot of the time. I finally feel like I can relax on it and RIDE it.

He knows the routine

We ended up doing the same figure-8 simple change exercise again (and I made a student do it too), which went super well! He figured out that we do have to change leads, which made him think that every time he broke, he had to pick up the wrong lead, but it really helped with the exercise. It's hard to keep all the parts together though, especially as I started to get the transitions closer together. The thing I need to do is make sure that the first transition goes well, because that leads to a balanced and round trot, which means it's easier to change the bend, and then get the new lead. Sounds simple. Actually a lot of riding sounds simple.

But it was hard, sometimes the downward would lead to a trot that was simply too large, and the horse overreacts to half halts (hah, or you know, I over aid because he's a horse and I've got a bigger brain so to blame it on him is stupid) so we get a herky jerky trot and then he comes off the bit into the new lead.

We had some really good work though! And this sort of thing seems to be correlated with him not bolting as much. I think it's hard enough for him that he's more focused, and trainer really wants me to do lots of changes of direction to keep TC's shoulders from locking up, since that is definitely a precursor to acting up.

So itchy!

Just as I was thinking that I was done with the ride, our little western friend left the arena, so I kept TC working. It was tricky, since he kept trying to look at the horse by retracting his neck, which caused tension, which caused unrideability. Gah. But we DID get it back and I was really happy that he settled again.

This weekend my trainer gets him while I'm in Vegas for my SIL's bachelorette party, so I'm hoping that he'll ride in the jumping arena by the driveway. It's the only arena with good footing (the arena by the road is getting its footing redone soon) that TC hasn't been in yet. And of course, lots of walking around the ranch, because by next summer, I totally want to be able to hop on bareback and wander a bit.