Dichotomous

Friday morning I went out to ride TC and when I got out of my car I knew we were going to have a questionable day. The guys have been watering the covered arena right as I get to the barn and not dragging it until most of the way through my rides. That’s totally fine because I don’t NEED the covered, but it would have been nice to have it on a morning like Friday when it was super windy and the only arena available was lined with trees that TC is pretty sure house the worst kind of birds (but is fine passing the trees when we’re on the other side of them).

Pictured: trees that are not offensive on this side of them, but are
if you are in the arena next to them

 My main goal after a harder ride on Thursday was to work on the throughness and lightness at the canter. TC is quite good about his canter work now, but he still needs a fair amount of support from my seat. In order to get him to be a little more comfortable with me being less involved, I’ve been asking for a less collected canter and being a little less structured and a little more following. Part of this is just amateur proofing him- I want anyone to be able to quietly canter him even if their seats aren’t as educated- and part of this is wanting to make sure that he isn’t always having to collect to the full amount every day, which will help his work ethic and his strength building.

But unfortunately the wind made TC nutty so the only canter I could get was either running away from me or was me being more involved than I had wanted to, supporting him with my seat. Whatever, sometimes rides don’t go according to plan. So we cantered for a long time.

Obnoxious

We worked mostly on just the quality of the collection and riding smaller figures. We did a few simple changes but nothing too exciting. The main issue with his simple changes is his strength anyway, so more collected canter wasn’t going to hurt with that. Plus with him being so reactive, I didn’t want to accidentally have him bolt out of the walk. For the most part we’ve avoided bolts in walk and I don’t want to show him how much fun that is.

The collected canter is feeling GREAT by the way. He can feel a bit stabby in the front end as he’s doing it, which is a baroque thing to do. He’s sort of figured out how to slap his front legs down a bit when he gets tense. So I worked to slow the tempo down and sit in a way that kept him on his hind legs a little longer. I can definitely control the amount of prongyness  so I need to keep an eye on that.

We did a lot of spiraling in and out, which is helpful because he sometimes doesn’t believe he can canter ten meter circles. Spiraling in allows me to feel when and how the canter starts to break down, and then I can stay on that size circle, address the problem, then spiral out again, then back in and try to avoid the problems.

Generally other than bolting pretty hard a couple of times, the ride was super fun. I don’t like the bolting, but when the horse then just gives me a collected canter that Rico didn’t have until he was at Fourth level, I mean, no complaints.

Dear TC, please canter like this from now on, thanks

Saturday’s ride though, was AMAZING in comparison. I actually did get the fun stretchy ride I had wanted out of him. We drilled the basics, including spiraling in and out at the trot, riding large versions of the 1-1 ice cream cones, riding the 2-1 shoulder-in pattern with a focus on being less drunk, and I finally got to work on the throughness at the canter.

He got a little scared randomly of something behind him. It wasn’t the giant trailer that passed us on the road, nor the bicycles, nor the tractor going through the orchard across the street. It was… nothing. Weird. Horse is very strange. 

But for the most part, we enjoyed an antics-free ride. I think the antics will be coming back more now that he's fit and we're coming into winter, but at this point they don't bother me that much. I am glad for all the good rides we get, but I feel like I can pretty much turn any bad ride into a decent ride. So that's good! Still though, TC, not a good reason to be obnoxious.