Cavalletti Sunday #1

At our epic blogger meetup a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about cavalletti exercises. L said that she tends to do a lot of pole work on Sundays when she's the only one at her barn, and I like setting up something on weekends too when I actually have time. We all talked about sharing exercises in a google doc and setting up Cavalletti Sundays (and actually they can be done any day since Kate really needs days off), where we all ride the same exercise and then talk about it.

L found three really cool exercises for this last weekend because she's an overachiever. I need to get on this shit. Two of them were going to be tricky with the number of poles I have access to in the covered (not many) and the length of the arena (not long), so I chose the cloverleaf pattern. Just four poles making up a square.

The bottom one

I a little bit forgot about Cavalletti Sunday until partway through my ride, so the ride started with some STELLAR lateral work from the genius horse. Not only have we totally fixed our leg yield problem in a matter of days, he is also giving me really solid shoulder-in and haunches-in at the walk. I think this walk lateral work warm up is here to stay as long as I have time (I often do not on weekdays). I've felt like we were stalling this winter working on the basics, but we really aren't.

We went into trot and he immediately felt really good in the contact- very much pressed into the bridle and lifting through his back. After doing just a lot of figures in trot, I suddenly remembered cavallettis and paused our warm up to put them out. I put them on a square 18 feet apart. I wasn't planning on cantering over the poles so I kind of didn't care how far apart they were. The poles were different lengths so I kind of had to wing it. It all worked out in the end.

Back on, and I decided to use the square as a marker for a circle, trying to stay the same distance away from each corner of the square. We did a bunch of trot-canter transitions on the circle, adding to our practice of the transitions the day before by incorporating the need to stay on the same circle the whole time. It was surprisingly difficult, though once as I started correcting for the future steps vs correcting the current steps, it got a lot easier.

After the ride

The big thing I noticed in the canter was that it felt REALLY good when he was downright heavy in the bridle. He has learned to press pretty heavily into the contact at the trot. And interjection- when I say heavy, I don't mean heavy heavy, this is a very light horse. But we're just missing something at the canter. I feel like he has the potential to have a ton of impulsion, but when I add the power he loses throughness. So we've been focusing on throughness, while of course maintaining his natural impulsion and quality of the gaits (no loss of suspension/four beat canter here), but not asking him to really strike off the ground and carry himself like he needs to in the future.

So I focused on clamping my leg on a bit more and getting him to really push into contact. It wasn't magic for impulsion, but it made him feel a thousand times more with me through his whole body, something I feel in the trot and something that I require in trot before asking him to start pushing with the hind end more than he is comfortable. Ah. So my next big steps in canter are to replicate the really good feeling of him grabbing the bit and me putting my leg on to bring his back up even more. Then we'll add power and I'll probably have to grow bigger balls.

I also took him and backed him through this contraption
because backing is tricky on him

After the canter, we did the actual cavalletti exercise. I kind of thought that it'd be an easy fun thing to do for us. Focus on getting him more miles of trotting in the good connection we've been working on, but give him something to do while he does it. Oh no. The geometry at first was tough, and having to go from small circle to straight line to small circle was a recipe for loss of throughness. By the second small circle, I had lost him and we only had a little bit to go before we were on a straight line! When I lost the throughness, the poles tended to get in his way. This is relating to him probably not tracking up, so he'd step over okay in the front end and then step on the pole behind.

Things got much better as I got more involved and helped him stay a bit better through. By the end it was riding really smoothly. But for an exercise I thought would be easy... it was not. I guess it was easy enough in that I did it, but I've got higher standards than just getting through it!

We are definitely going to be doing more of this, possibly more than once a week. I think the poles are a really good check for us on a number of things on my list.

You can see my canter circle

At the end of the ride, we wandered around the ranch and I found out that there has been a lady at my barn who has been FEEDING TC GRAIN EVERY DAY. Like this woman has said maybe two words to me, but she told my friend that TC was so sweet and cute that she couldn't help but to give him some grain. I guess she finally realized it was a bad thing when TC saw her while I was on him and started misbehaving (I remember this incident and it wasn't her, but dude that's when you think that it might not be a good thing you're doing?). My friend apparently ripped her a new one, which I really appreciate, so I think that this behavior has stopped. But I'm still pretty pissed off.

What if he had a food allergy? What if he had EPSM or another metabolic disorder? What if he colicked? What if he needed the vet out? What if he needed surgery? What if he died? I know I'm dramatic but STILL this horse is actually worth enough now where I could not afford to replace him.

I'm doing several things to fix this:
1) I'm putting up passive aggressive signs all over TC's stall telling people not to feed him
2) I'm emailing my barn owner even just to have my complaint in writing
3) I'm writing her a note (I rarely see her since she rides at like 10-11am) telling her that this is completely unacceptable and asking her to give me a detailed account of what kind of food she had been feeding him and when she fed it to him.
4) I'm printing off an article or two about equine nutrition to leave in her trunk along with the note. I'd hope that people who owned horses would understand that you can't just willy nilly add grain to a strange horse's diet without a care in the world, but she for sure needs some more education on this subject.

So we'll see how all that goes. I'm pretty livid, but I'm also obviously glad that the behavior seems to have stopped and that TC at least seems no worse for wear. I will be monitoring him closely to see if there are any behavior or weight changes in the next few weeks.