How Things Have Changed

If you've been paying attention, you've noticed that my relationship with TC has changed pretty dramatically in the last couple of weeks. I haven't even put everything on this blog from the last couple of months, including some good rides that I wrote about and then deleted when he suddenly reverted back to bad behavior and including some bad times where I actually put him up for sale and contacted a friend about him.

So shoutout to everyone who has been on the receiving end of my crazy. But y'all are getting a break right now, because it's officially been two weeks since I started riding again and every single day has been a good one.

I started keeping track of positive and negative days a while ago, putting a plus or minus sign on my calendar along with a description of my ride. For a while, we had about half good and half bad (bad = just those days where we had naughty behavior that scared me, not just him not feeling like working or kicking out or bucking or scooting), which isn't enough for me. I don't want to get off my horse every other ride wondering if I can do this. For every penny we managed to deposit in our trust bank on a good day, he'd deduct a dollar the next day when he'd bolt or come out all nutty. Very quickly we were operating in the negative.

Obviously there's so much room for improvement in the
throughness and rider departments, but given how
unbalanced/terrible his canter was last year, I love this

And now we've gone two full weeks of plus signs. Even after a day off, even when riding with other people, even when riding early early in the morning or late in the evening, even when riding off the property, even when riding in previously spooky places. And it feels great! Every one of those days I've been able to focus on his dressage training, and that has really paid off! Enjoy these gifs while I go over in detail what exactly changed.

A lot of things outside of my attitude change, though I think my attitude has really maintained this change in behavior. So I'll start with the outside influences.

New Paddock
TC is now living out in a giant paddock with two playful horses next to him. While it still gives me a heart attack when he does anything but wander around out there (he plays a LOT and canters around like a nut a lot of the time), he now doesn't rely on the hour a day I take him out to get ALL of his energy out. He knows that he can run any time he wants, so his desire to run away with me has diminished.

This is like.... not even close to what he can do in his lengthened
canter and it's quite enough for me right now. 

No Calming Supplement
I pulled him off of this at the same time as he moved to the new paddock and I think it's helped me a lot. For so long, I was afraid of taking him off of it, so I had it in the back of my mind that he was so nutty that I couldn't have him off of it. Ugh. No more of that unless he TRULY needs it, and he seems fine without it.

No Trainer
My trainer served his purpose by getting me started on TC after rehab, but I felt like we were floundering a bit. I've had this problem with several trainers now- people seem to both treat me like TC is a problem horse (he's not) and treat me like I should be riding much better than I am. This makes me feel like I can't handle him. Now, don't get me wrong, I do NOT like his bolting or his bad behavior, but the reality is that nothing he's given me so far has been *too much* for me, as much as it's just been *not something I want to deal with* and there's a big difference there.

I took over the training the way I wanted to and it's paying off. I do want to try to find a trainer who works well with me, but I'm confident I can bring him up the levels enough on my own (I have trained client horses up to PSG with no help and Rico to GP with weekly lessons, so I'm not incompetent) where I can take my time figuring a training situation that will work.

I love how soft and steady he is, it can always be better, but he
feels so delicate to ride (when I get out of his way)

New Attitude
This has been a game changer for me. It started with Jeremy Steinberg, so major shout out to Peony for convincing me to come up (it wasn't hard but it's not like I was knocking down her door asking to come audit). The phrase screw up with confidence.

He talked about it mostly in terms of a rider who thinks that they are going to train their horse wrong. I don't feel like that often. Sometimes I feel like my horse is a lot fancier than I am (and then I remember that I found him in a field and he was going to be sold as a husband horse), but I struggled with that a lot with Rico and got over it. I pay the bills, I sacrifice a lot for you, I don't care if another owner/rider could have you score 10 percentage points higher, I'm going to stuff you full of carrots and make you smile at me and sometimes get my timing wrong on a change and you're going to fucking like it and give me a clean change.

It took me about two weeks and a good cry while writing a sale ad for me to realize how I could really apply this thinking to my own situation.

Realistically, I can handle everything the horse has given to me. His bolts scare me, but not in a I'm seriously scared for my life way, more of a I don't like this much cortisol in my body way. My fear mostly comes from the idea that he might do something in the future that I can't handle. That's not logical. And by feeling like this, in combination with my tendency to have a hot seat and tight hip flexors, I was telling him to be spooky, nervous, and explosive.

He's never going to have a super amazing stretch circle, but this
is such a huge improvement from this fall (which is a little pathetic
but dude the horse's neck comes out of his back)

So I told myself this: either I become the rider he needs me to be, or I sell him. And I did put him briefly up for sale. But with the idea that people might need to, you know, try him in order to want to buy him, I started riding him again.

And with the other changes, I found it easier to be the rider he needed. And because of that, he gained confidence and started to give confidence back to me. And then I gave it to him again.

In the last two weeks, we've encountered so much that he's really impressed me with:

- There are a couple of ladies that fill hay bags and soaks them outside of two different arenas. These people have been the bane of my existence with this horse. He doesn't even look at them anymore.

- There is someone at the barn who, historically, I've never been able to ride with because they simply don't steer and TC used to get really distracted by their erratic behavior (they tend to run up our butts or pass too fast or what not). Yesterday evening in the wind he was totally cool with sharing the arena with them. We only had a couple of close calls and TC acted like he'd lived in an FEI warm up for ten years.

- I used to have to leave the arena if any other horse left the arena, now he's fine with other horses entering/leaving, doesn't even look at them most of the time. The most he's done in the last couple weeks is one of his "eeeeeeeeEEEEEEeeeeeeeee" whinnies while staying with me. So whatever, he can sing the song of his people any time he wants as long as he's on the bit and paying attention.

- He's not afraid of birds anymore, even when the crazy young owls screech and fly in and out of the ring. He has developed a slight fear of a tiny dog who gets dog turnout in a pen near the driveway though. Oh well.

- He's not afraid of traffic anymore. Not motorcycles just beyond the covered, not jeeps barreling down the road right next to the ring at my parents' ranch, not cars coming in the driveway, EVEN when they splash in puddles, which used to be the worst thing EVER.

- I can get on him and walk him around the ranch on a loose rein while playing on my phone.

- At one point during the ride these gifs are from, I kind of wished he'd spook at my camera bag that I had left near the rail (you can see it down near A) because he was being lazy. Why am I wishing that my horse would spook?!

Pretty decent for not really practicing them recently

As a thank you for going through all this for me (and a preemptive thank you for going through more shit in the future), I have some bloopers for you.

I don't normally post bloopers on this blog, but these two gifs were just so funny since TC is so rarely shitty. The first one is hilarious to me because I know a certain other blogger horse who loves to pull this stunt (in a more impressive way) and we've agreed to NEVER let our horses meet. Murray doesn't need to learn to bolt from TC and TC doesn't need any tips in improving his kicky bucks.

I don't care as long as his head stays up, this is because I rode him
a bit behind my leg and then half halted. It goes away when he is
stronger, it's his way of saying "don't make me bend my hocks"

The next is a zip away from the pile of jumps that he thinks is going to murder him. You can see how he's so so so so so much better about letting me get him back to me rather than escalating further. One step is laughable, and I actually do think I was laughing about this. And gah, so much of me wishes that change had been clean too (together behind the step before the change).

DRESSAGE ROCKS he yells, as he notices the pile of jumps
and gives me a zoom step

Also lol bf watched me make these gifs and he was like "are you just watching yourself over and over again?" and then he asked "why is TC wearing leggings?"

Horses, always a source of entertainment.