Creating Better Everything

On Saturday I once again stuffed TC in the trailer. We've now gone off the property seven times this year, at five distinct places. And I think I'm safe to say that TC has really figured this whole thing out. Academic Horse Training (oh man I think this is what it's called, it should really just be called The Horse Training Bible), the book Kate lent me this winter that I really want to steal own one day, says that because horses don't generalize well, it takes a lot of repetition with things like this. They use a water complex as an example- a horse needs to go to five different water complexes in order to really understand that yes you get in the water EVERY time, not just at this one complex.

So this trip, to the fifth distinct place we've gone to this year, was a big one. Would TC get out of the trailer and just lose it because he hadn't been there before? Or would he confirm the number five as a magic number?

Looks pretty magical

We got there and had about thirty minutes before my lesson, so I tacked him up and we wandered around in hand. And he was fine. He was spooky, because he's a spooky horse, but he never left. We walked in both arenas and then way down the road to the additional barn that they had built for stabling at shows. He really didn't like that barn, probably just because it was isolated and he hates it when it goes from light to dark or dark to light. He spooks a lot going in and out of covered areas. 

Tracey showed up and I opted to ride in the outdoor arena. It's bigger and the rafters in the covered are low. Not that TC has threatened to do any sort of acrobatics lately, but I still feel claustrophobic on him in arenas with low rafters. 

TC handled everything super well. He had to share the arena with another horse, and that horse left. He had to deal with horses being tacked up and untacked outside the ring, he had to deal with another instructor sitting in the judge's booth, he had to deal with the food cart being driven around. And he was fine. Like totally fine. Sometimes spooky, and we had one head-straight-up-what-the-fuck-is-that incident, but other than that, he just went to work. 

Ugh my gif maker isn't working so look, a screenshot. This one
shows him at the place where he's comfortable- a bit btv and closed
in his throatlatch, he needs to push out just a bit more. 

 And the work was SUPER good. I found myself feeling slightly bummed about our last lesson. Tracey tends to take things slow and I really don't want to push this horse like I had to push Rico. My goal with TC is the upper upper levels, I don't really care what we do in between now and Grand Prix with him. Some levels we'll breeze through, others we'll take our time with, it's not a big deal, and I'd honestly like to score well instead of well enough. But at the same time, the idea that we'd be doing Training level all year made me feel a little meh. I embraced it though, reshuffled my goals around, and for the last two weeks since that lesson, we've been working our ASSES off with the new concepts. 

This lesson had a lot of new information for us and I was excited to not get too much of the same instruction. At one point, Tracey said we were basically ready for First (okay she said ready to start First level work, but TC already does all the First level movements) except that TC's canter needs to be slightly more adjustable. She's incredibly picky (remember how she was really concerned about me going PSG on Rico and then we got a 65?) so I feel much better about the idea of being able to do First this year with a respectable score. 

He's really figuring out how to use the part of his neck right in
front of the withers. 

We started with the trot work. The main issue in the trot is that TC wants to carry himself behind the vertical. Tracey said she had this problem with her Grand Prix horse. TC feels great like that. He feels wobbly and hesitant when he's on the vertical. This isn't anyone's fault, it's just how he's built. He needs to learn to get his chest back and sit down, but also to reach forward out to the bridle. I felt like he was reaching, but he was still a little too round at the poll. So I was encouraged to get my hands out in front of me and uncurl him. 

It's hard because the connection actually feels much worse out there, and this is why I want to give my dad a huge shout out for being there and videoing my entire lesson. He fell off Riot recently and has a cast on his arm and some broken ribs, so my mom wanted him to get away from the ranch so he wouldn't work. I need help turning the trailer around at ASH so it all worked out! The video made all the difference to me and I can't tell you how many times I've watched it.

Bending left is his favorite

The trot got better and better as we rode and Tracey tweaked my position. The main issue is my unwillingness to realize that my horse is, you know, actually trained now. It kind of sneaks up on you. Like he goes on the bit and he bends in each direction and he leg yields and he does his transitions without inserting his ears up your nose mostly. But I tend to still want to get my hands a bit wide, which Tracey said act like draw reins. Wide hands don't get the horse to connect in the correct way, they just get the head down, which is fine on a young horse when they're first learning. But TC is an old pro at this dressage thing and I need to get my hands closer together so he can connect properly.

I also had an issue with my left side, which is a normal thing for me. I tended to fall back on my left thigh, meaning that I was riding too much off the back of my thigh on that side. I also had a bit of a twist, which was pointed out to me briefly last time I rode with her. As I go to sit, my left hand takes back slightly, then as I go to rise, I bring it forward. It's not super noticeable, I can't actually see it all too well in the video, but TC is quite a sensitive fellow in the bridle and it causes the slightest bit of a head wag every now and then.

Wide right hand, he can't connect to it when it's out there. And
hey maybe your super short backed horse doesn't need your leg
back there to bend, Megan. Man I miss the control I used to have
over my body when I was stronger!

After fixing us both- TC in the connection and me in my everything, we started to do some leg yields. The leg yields were primarily for getting him more even in the reins. TC isn't uneven in the reins, but he does tend to want to connect more to the left rein than to the right. Moving him off the left leg in a shallow leg yield got him to connect better to the right rein, which worked out really well. My job was to not take back on the left rein at all in that leg yield, as it brought him a little crooked and artificially connected him to the right. He had to step to the right rein from my leg, not from me just pulling him sideways and dumping him into it. 

Off the right leg was trickier. He wants to fall away from the contact on the right rein and not put his right hind under him, so my job was to keep him straight and almost counter bent and keep him up to the right rein. When we got it, it felt AMAZING, it felt like I've never felt a correct leg yield until now. But then I haven't been able to replicate it at home. Oh well.

After the first couple of leg yields each way, we did some fifteen meter trot circles at each end. That size circle is good for us- he's really comfortable on twenty meter circles, and ten meter circles are still kind of a crap shoot. I can get him around them and they look fine, but they aren't easy. So the fifteen meter circles are enough to really get him bending and coming around, but not so much that they're easy to fuck up.

So hard to get him to stay up to the right rein but bring his right
hind under him

To the right, he needed a lot of encouragement to get his right hind under him better. I tended to want to bring him around in the bridle and then stop before he really had to soften. Tracey urged me to a) keep more consistent contact on the rein to encourage him to do so too and b) to bring him slightly more bent than he is comfortable so that he really steps off the right leg and steps into the right rein. To the left, I just needed to allow more with my right hand so that he could take his right ear forward more in the connection. It's amazing having a horse who is so sensitive, one small movement like that completely transformed the way he was going. He is so cool.

This post is already getting long and we haven't even talked about the canter! So I'll go over that and my struggles with the sitting trot tomorrow.