It Should Be Easy

As I drove home from my lesson, which I am still talking about because I have no chill, I was smiling way more than I have in the last month with TC. I also had a question for myself: if this is a First level horse, what the hell have I been riding all this time? And how am I ever going to ride this freak of a horse when he hits the FEI levels?

God I wish I had media. I need a soloshot stat! Or to tune up my "hey come to my lesson" spiel, I think I make it sound too boring and/or don't offer good enough perks.

Perk: hanging out with this hippo

Back up a bit. After the first five minutes of basilisk wrangling where Tanya reminded me that I was capable of riding my horse through some shit and that my horse was mentally strong enough to be told that he was naughty, we got down to business.

Much of the lesson was just kind of hitting buttons to help diffuse the energy, almost experimenting with a warm up of sorts (since Tanya has me a tiny bit convinced to maybe possibly maybe go show with them... I will be posting my long rambling pros and cons eventually).

We put him in shoulder-in down the long side, then leg yield across the diagonal and rinse, repeat. Tanya's two big points for me were to a) feel like TC is taking me in the lateral work vs me pushing him and b) keep the trot a trot in the lateral work.

Basically, TC should not require any leg once as I put him in a lateral movement. I was thinking that the left leg yield felt so good and Tanya said "get him off your right leg, he's not responding" and I had no idea that she legitimately meant NO leg. Like I put him in it and then all aids release. Not even a maintenance aid. Wow okay. Same thing with the forward energy. The trot stays a trot, it doesn't get shuffle-y or change at ALL. And she meant... at all. Like I was thinking that our shoulder-in was feeling pretty good and Tanya said that he unloaded his hocks in it. Oh. Okay.

Guess who else liked to unload his hocks all the time?

The canter work felt pretty good, though I was happy when TC got a little backed off like he does at home so that she could help me with that. Tanya's big thing with the canter was making sure that the inside hind leg maintained its depth (under the abdomen) when going from the medium canter to the collected canter. TC, like a lot of horses learning to collect their canter, loses the big reach from the inside hind leg sometimes, and this is generally due to being tight in the lower back.

Shockingly (not), this means that he is more likely to prop and/or buck when asked to move forward again. The reason being is that if he is not committed to having his legs under him, he is able to take them back and up in a buck. Duh. But also, this is an amazing revelation given that I've been literally having him buckbuckbuckbuck whenever I ask him to go forward out of a "collected" canter and now I know why.

I can't even describe what the canter felt like when we actually got it. I didn't know I had a horse who could canter like that. I didn't know horses could canter like that. It was uphill and powerful... but just easy. Like he got into it and I immediately was like .... um .... what do I do now? And the answer was just DON'T FUCK IT UP.

See how he is not coming through with his inside hind leg as
much as he could be? Well, it's mostly because he's a ball of
fire at this point, but also I need to put more horse in front of me

Vs this when he was more relaxed, gotta find this reach with
that lift in the shoulders!

Back in trot, we went back into shoulder-in and once again I lost the hind legs out behind us when Tanya had me add more trot. She told me that this was TC's tendency, if she had to pick one (not retracting his neck? That made me so happy to hear), though she didn't seem concerned at all.

She had a fix for this though. After a few quick trot-walk-trot transitions, she had me "almost walk" in trot, basically take him back to half steps (phew glad I started those recently) and "make him uncomfortable" there. Like tap him and ask him to get his hind legs under. Keep him round and straight and active, but ask him to compress a bit. From there, ride out.

So I obviously got him there and then dumped him on the forehand as I rode out in this giant pushing trot. Erm, not the point, Megan. We went back and did it again and instead of out I thought up like a passage transition and HOLY SHIT. If I thought the canter felt amazing, it felt like shit in comparison to this trot. I've never felt a trot like this. Certainly not out of this horse. But also not out of any other horse. Damn.

How long until he does the prancing?? And maybe this time I
will teach my horse to do it in a real bridle lol I had been riding
him bareback that day and was like sure, let's try the piaffe
in hand against the barn because of reasons

I think the biggest thing that I took away from this trot and canter work is the title of the post. This should all be easy. My job is to build a reinforcement history for responses to my aids so that I don't have to nudge and kick and pull and poke or provide any support to him. I should be able to put him in a lateral movement and not have to do anything until I stop him. I should put my leg on and he should go bounding forward and stay that way even after I take my leg off. I should be able to ask for ANYTHING and he should just be like "yep" and go for it.

And I mean yeah, if it doesn't feel easy, something is wrong and probably in the basics. For TC, it's that he just gets behind me a half step. Not lethargic like Rico, not requiring kicks every step, but enough behind me where I have to remind him of things periodically. No reminders.

This leg yield is now like... twice as good because I am doing less

We ended after the last bit of trot work and talked about TC for a while. What I took from that is: I really need to get on board the Believe-in-TC train that Tanya is on. She seemed really impressed with him, his gaits and his willingness to just step up and do the work. I, on the other hand, let him get away with propping in the canter and not staying fluid in the lateral work just because this is what I feel like a backyard bred horse that I found in a pasture would feel like. I just think "well I can't expect him to be as good as Rico, Rico was imported from Germany (not by me) and bred to do this" but NO.

As of this lesson, TC is basically at the place in his throughness and his gait quality as Rico was when we got to Prix St George.

Now though, now it's time to be able to find these gaits all the time and not only in the presence of my wizard of a trainer.