In the Right Direction

TC continues to improve day after day. We're still mostly doing ground work- hand walking around the ranch (weather permitting), then doing some trotting in hand, then a bit of ground work in the arena, and then I hop on for the remainder of his trot work before we hand walk around again. I'm taking a leaf out of the many natural horsemanship books that I haven't read and doing minimal riding until the ground work improves. The nice thing about ground work is that he can't intimidate me there, and I don't ever lose confidence on the ground- I can also stop him mid bolt while undersaddle he can get away from me a lot faster.

Such a good little horse

Trotting in hand has been really good too. In the past, any time I'd trot him in hand, he'd try to play with me. Now he just trots quietly next to me. I think he's realizing that unless he wants to sit down and play backgammon with me, I'm not interested in playing games with him. I'm so boring.

While wandering around the ranch, he's handling himself a lot better when shit hits the fan. The other day a horse was in turnout and exploded behind us. In the past, this would have meant that I was dragged down the road away from that horse and then TC would have been insane the rest of the day. This time he just splayed all legs out, snorted, and then threatened to passage away. Much better response!

AND I've actually had two days now where I have taken him back behind the riding school with no problems. In the past he's really been freaked out back there, and he still is, but he's again handling himself a lot better when he gets scared. I've let him eat a bit back there, which I think is helping him get over his fear. Grass > whatever he thinks is back there, apparently.

On the ground, he's so much better- he stands quietly in the cross ties, moves out of my way politely, picks up all his feet without kicking me, and hasn't bit the chains in a while. When I go to put stuff away or grab stuff from my tack room, he snoozes in the cross ties rather than stepping to the front of them and pawing. I can tack him up without him trying to yank the saddle or surcingle off of himself by the billets, and I can't remember the last time he went to bite me.

Yummy grass

Undersaddle remains the most questionable, but that's because most of the work we do is on the ground right now. But it is translating a bit.

Last week I rode him a few times and I was going to dissect the rides a bit more.

At the beginning of all of the rides, we've had to have a talk about him going forward (edit- except yesterday!). His first instinct is still to balk and threaten to rear. I've taken to grabbing one rein, bringing his nose around, and smacking him, then releasing when he goes forward. This works two ways, one: if you threaten to rear, you will have to do this unpleasant thing and when you stop doing it, you get to go forward; two: if he DOES rear, which I don't think he will, at least not so high to be dangerous, I already have him turning his neck to throw him off balance.

But the head turn and smack has been helpful. The other helpful thing has been to work on mounting. TC tunes me out when I go to mount him. I've been doing a lot of setting him up to be mounted and then making him back up or do a turn on the forehand. The other thing I've been doing is making him give to the outside rein when I go to mount him. I take his neck to the side and when he softens, he gets the rein back. This lets me get his neck down so that I'm not getting onto a short necked, rigid backed crazy animal. At least having his neck down gives me a better starting place.

Once as we're moving, he's a fucking dreamboat, as usual. There have definitely been threats, and I'm being certain to get on his case when he even thinks about doing anything but being perfect. I'm taking a note out of my old jumping trainer's boat with Rico- if I wait until he's doing something TERRIBLE to discipline him, then he'll keep doing that thing. If I discipline him when he intends to do something terrible, I can stop him from actually doing the thing.

For example, on Tuesday night of last week, I rode him. There were bats screeching in the dark and he hated that. He went to bolt but didn't, just sort of got short in the neck and scooted, I immediately laid into him like he did bolt, and when he slowed down I released everything and invited him to go forward again, which he did willingly. If he thinks I'll get on his case that much for even THINKING about bolting, he doesn't want to know what I'd do if he actually bolts. I dunno, I might be creating a monster but for now it's working.

Nice to see the sun too!

The dressage itself has been magical though. Like not a toe out of line. He's super out of shape strength-wise (I mean we're only doing like 5 minutes of trot total so he's definitely out of shape cardio-wise but we're not noticing that as much), but he's trying so hard.

I love the feeling this horse gives me, as I've gone on and on before. And it's much better now than it was. Previously we had problems with steering, but I've been doing a ton of work on moving his shoulders in hand because he likes to bully me with them. That work has translated undersaddle and I've got him laterally now. We're also doing a TON of backing up a la Walter's trainer, so he's stronger behind and is bending his hocks for realzies.

He's so willing to bring his back up, and after my lessons with Kate really drilling into me about keeping my leg on to the jumps, I'm better at keeping them on him too. And working toward strengthening my core so that I can remain more centered if he does anything.

There's not much you can do trotting a few laps and not doing any lateral work or circles or transitions, so I'm mostly working on the connection. He's into the bridle a lot more than he was previously, so I can affect where the connection is, meaning that I can change the shape of his spindly little neck easier. I've got him reaching out a bit better since starting to ride him again, and he's bringing his back up better as well. The hind legs feel great, though he is still tending to push slightly unevenly, which I'm hoping to address with backing up in some circles and then eventually adding in lateral work.

His lips were green from the grass

With all of this going well so far, I've given the barns notice that I will be staying put for the time being. He'll move to pasture when the rains stop and the pasture dries out. I still want him to go, mostly for financial reasons, as well as getting him feeling better mentally. The barn where he's going is smaller and doesn't have a lot of the perks (no clinicians/dressage trainers, no lights, less arenas, and a small, narrow covered ring) but it has what we need. I can't wait to see his face when he sees where he's going to be living, hopefully from here on out.

Overall I'm having a little more fun on him recently. I still need to figure out what to do long term, but for now, it's been a blast to have this horse back in work. We'll see what the future holds when we get there!