Re-installation

Thursday morning I decided that I was going to tackle the haunches-in with TC. It's kind of like Second Level Week over here as I poke all the buttons and see what needs polishing for the show ring over the next two to eight months between now and our Second level debut.

Also on the agenda: clicker training square halts!

TC has been schooling haunches-in for a while now, but it's always been really hard for him. It's not my favorite movement, so I also probably have been slacking on it lately.

Haunches-in can be a bit tricky in that it's super easy to do wrong and think that you're doing it right. Like the shoulder-in being more like haunches-out, the haunches-in can be more like shoulder-out. Both of those are wrong. The key is to look at the outside front leg, it should track forward rather than step outward as the horse transitions from the straight line to the haunches-in.

The big key of haunches-in and half pass is to keep the horse's weight on the outside of their body, into the outside rein. Many riders open their outside rein to let the shoulders fall out, shove the horse over with the outside leg, and hold the horse up in bend with the inside rein. That's cool. But don't do that.

The haunches-in (lateral) part of the haunches-in should always come from the half halt on the outside rein, not the outside leg. The outside leg isn't even supposed to be very far back, which comes back to bite you HARD in the zig zag at the upper levels. The inside rein should be softly connected, and the inside leg should be on and pushing the horse into the outside rein.

At one point getting this horse to go into any rein was hard!

This historically has been HARD for me to get because so many horses are trained wrong, I've had a lot of practice doing it wrong. So it has been my goal to make TC's haunches-in very correct so that I don't keep on this perpetual loop of shitty haunches-in and half pass.

I started out in trot just seeing what it was like and sure enough, TC's tendency is already to fall out with his shoulder instead of really bringing the haunches around my inside leg. I set him up again and failed again. And again we did it and I started to realize that he REALLY doesn't want to go to the outside rein (in either direction).

So we went into shoulder-in and fixed that right up. From the shoulder-in, I transitioned straight for 2-3 steps and asked again and voila! Really amazing haunches-in! Until I he faltered and I shoved my outside leg back to fix it instead of using my half halt on my outside rein... yeah.

He's so cute

I decided to ride the movement in canter as well. Like I said in yesterday's post, my goal for the end of the year is to start laying down the foundation for Third and Fourth level. And one of those movements I think will delay us is the canter pirouettes. TC is no where NEAR ready to school them, but he can start to do shoulder-in and haunches-in on the circle, which is one of my favorite baby pirouette exercises. Basically, let me shove you around at the canter.

TC took to the haunches-in on the canter SUPER well. I think part of it is that while I've had a lot of practice riding shit haunches-in and half pass, I honestly am pretty decent at riding the pirouettes. This is just because I've only really ridden pirouettes with good trainers, vs the trainer who taught me the lower level stuff was kind of terrible at teaching them.

He wanted to slow down, and normally I'd be okay with that, but sure enough the moment he slowed down, I lost the inside hind leg as we went by the jump he kicked down last week and he went careening off trying to kick it down again. He missed. So he's not ready for pirouette canter or anything. But we're good to get him moving laterally at the canter.

From there, we looked at the counter canter and I had a realization again. Once again, I've ridden a lot of shit counter canter, so of course I lost my bear down and my slingshot as I transitioned into it. Interesting. So I forced myself to get hunkered down into it and what do you know... the quality of the canter got MUCH better. Huh. Probably totally unrelated!

Case in point my seat gets worse in counter canter

Generally TC has been feeling really great. I'm still so happy with the show. I looked it up and this is also MY highest score ever too! And to come home and have really great schools at Second makes me feel really good. We have a long way to go but I think we can get there without toooo many bumps in the road!

This weekend should be a fun one! I'll have a fun update when I get back from the bay.