In the Court

Wednesday morning I had to get up and out real early to ride the pony before my afternoon stuff began  . When I got to the barn, I parked right near the dressage court and saw that the footing looked amazing, so I was really determined to get in there and do some work.

I love this picture, holy crap is that my horse?

I hopped on TC without a longe, as I had the day before, but still headed to the round pen. It was extremely tempting to just do the whole ride in the court, but baby steps.

In the round pen, we worked on some transitions, as well as TC's obnoxious habit of thinking that he knows everything there is to know about dressage (I been doin' dressage before you were BORN, creature). He has started jigging in the walk just because he knows that every time we walk, we're going to trot soon. And he's started just picking up the canter from the trot whenever he feels like it, because we're probably going to be cantering soon, and now seems like a good time. He's also decided that breaking is fine, since I used to let him get away with that when he was just coming back, but now he has to keep going until I tell him it's time to stop.

This is very hard for him. BRH trainer called him arrogant, which made me laugh. He's definitely less obnoxious about this in the big arenas, I think because our routine is different every time, but he's right about the round pen. There's not much to do, we just trot around, do some walk trot transitions, do some trot canter transitions, and go the other way, rinse, repeat.

In between the moments of anticipation, we got some really good quality work. The canter feels better every day and the throughness of the trot is there every step of the way. All we're doing now is getting me to stop making minor adjustments because the tiniest movement of my hand makes him move his nose around thinking it's an aid and not just that I have no control over my left hand.

Retracted but LEFT LEAD

We headed out to the dressage court after that, my idea being that BRH trainer could ride TC around there, and then maybe on Thursday, I would ride him out there.

But TC was super quiet walking out, so I walked him around the arena with BRH trainer on foot. He talked me through staying relaxed and keeping my nerves to a minimum, since TC is so much more confident with him. He said that TC really defaults to me (when anyone else is riding and I talk to him, he ignores them lol he has to stop doing that), so even the tiniest bit of nerves on my part makes him nervous. To me, this means two things: first, I need to work on controlling what I'm communicating to him, while on Rico I could tense up (like when Rico would quietly walk across the busy road while I'm twitching about the big rigs zipping by) and it wasn't a big deal, on TC I need to channel my inner zen master. Second, I need to recognize when I am going to affect him negatively, and remove myself from the situation. No more trying to be a hero, just get off and longe or change arenas or do something different.

But with BRH trainer there, I felt confident and content to ride him! Since TC was so good, I picked up a trot!

And rode the first twenty meter circle in a dressage court in quite some time! It was surprisingly good! Because we were going right. The footing was all soft and perfectly dragged, so I could see our perfect little track to the right in the sand. Changing directions, I could see how freakishly wiggly we are that way. It felt better than I thought it would, but I totally ruined our perfect little circle. I know what my first Tracey lesson is going to be on... geometry. Damnit.

TC offered some stretching (in an arena he hasn't worked in for a year and a half??) so I let him go down. The ride was just so damn good.

This is him breaking from canter, but look, he looks like he has
a piaffe that doesn't sit at all!

Thursday I came out eager to get back in the court. We started in the round pen with no longe and I started left. Starting left is always questionable because of the straightness and anticipation. Whenever I get him straight, he thinks he should canter, so we had it out about that. But I eventually just threw him into canter, got up in half seat, and cantered around until he begged to trot. Then we had some really nice trot work. BRH trainer said that sometimes when he has too much energy, TC gets way way ahead of himself and it's better to just let him go rather than have a long discussion with him about waiting when he's too energetic for his own good.

We did the same thing to the right, burn off some energy by cantering. About two thirds of the way through the canter, two horses got turned out next to us and started to play. Because we were already cantering, I got to address that as an issue of mine. I tend to want to slow down and stop when stuff happens around us, but BRH trainer kept me going and it actually ended up being super good for me. As long as we were moving and TC was allowed to look, he was fine. I KNOW that keeping him moving is key in all of this, since then if he wants to bolt, he's already going forward and I can just direct the energy rather than all of a sudden have it burst forward in whatever direction he wants. But it's hard to ride him positively forward when all I want to do is slow down and spook at it as well.

He was super good about that, and we had some of the best right lead canter we've had in a long time. I even played a bit with what will eventually be a lengthened canter.  Such a good smart pony.

STRETCHING I mean it isn't a 9 but it's a huge change
for him

The trot work felt great, he was so soft and so steady. BRH trainer pushed me to get him even more over his back, which I honestly didn't think was possible. He felt so good at that point. But there was this whole new looseness in his shoulder when I got it. Craziness! This horse is super fun, I need to remember to push for more, go for the 9 instead of what feels like a solid 8.

After we had such great work in the round pen, we walked out to the dressage court again. A whole lot of stuff was happening around us- someone was having truck trouble so was turning the thing on and off again, making lots of noise, people were tacking horses up in the rarely-used cross ties near the arena, there was a tractor in the fields next door, someone was having a lesson in the trail course. So basically stuff going on on each side of the arena.

But TC stayed with me the whole time! I put him right to work on the twenty meter circle and he was great. Even from the day before, I felt like to the left, I could keep him on the circles so much better. And obviously the right was super easy. I turned the circle into a figure-8 as I usually do in a court. The changes of direction were seamless. Like good enough where I really probably don't need to do so many figure-8s. But still, never had so much fun riding on 20 meter circles.

His trot is getting real fancy

We did enough work where I just let him be done after that. My friend/client with fear issues and I talked about the importance of not pushing it and making little doable goals. So while I really want to be cantering in there and test riding, I used a lot more of the arena this ride and that's still progress.

I told BRH trainer that my goal was to practice all the Training level tests and maybe some First level tests by the time winter hits. Mostly because I may end up showing him over the winter or next spring (maybe before the rains stop), and in the winter we have no court to ride in because the court doesn't fit in the covered arena. Working on some test riding this fall will be helpful so then over the winter we can focus on surviving the left lead canter.