Learning to Sit Down

Last night I had my first lesson in over a month! I have been trying to take two a month since I started riding with my new trainer, but I clearly failed in August. As I wrote about last week though, the Soloshot has been allowing me to be my own trainer, so it hasn't been so bad and after last night, I think that Tanya and I are totally on the same track with what we want TC to be doing.

Still, I love lessons, so Monday afternoon I hitched up and took TC over to M's barn (a 5 minute drive away). I've been wanting a lesson at home, just because TC is so different there, but hauling out is always a good idea for him. TC seemed to miss hauling out, since he nickered at the trailer as he walked in, pretty good for the horse who used to have absolute meltdowns off the property.

What a pony

TC was much more chill at M's barn in comparison to the first time he was there. Tanya asked how things had been going and I couldn't help but to say something like "WELL I MEAN WE HAVE BEEN WINNING EVERYTHING" and she asked whether all my scores were in the 70s. Oh... no they weren't, only two of them were. This is the year of 68-69%s, boo. But she said she was impressed with my ability to keep TC in the court when he tried to leave, so that was nice to hear. Not like I've had practice with him trying to nope out of the court before...

Moving forward, I told her that I was kind of thinking about either Second level or a First level freestyle. Part of me wants a few more 1-3 tests under our belts this fall (preferably to snag a few more 70%s) and next spring while we also show 2-1. The other part of me is pretty sick of 1-3 even though we've only ridden it twice (successfully) in the show ring. We rode T3 a lot more.

But the main goal was to be able to go 2-1 and 2-2 at the schooling show in October and not look totally out of place. I know that we're not ready (inb4 someone says that scoring in the 70s = ready for the next level, he gets 8s on things that aren't at Second, turns out the levels all have different movements lol), but we can still put in a respectable test for a schooling show.

The soloshot makes my horse seem so downhill sometimes,
excited to get a new tripod at some point...

Tanya was on board with that, though seemed to have a preference for us moving up vs doing a freestyle. We started working in trot, just warming up. She had nothing but good things to say about us warming up- TC looks great, steady and out to the bridle, active behind, straight. Cool! I also didn't get nailed for any mechanics, but that's because I wasn't sore anymore. All these pictures are from my ride on Sunday night when I was still pretty sore. 

Once in canter, she had a lot more to say. TC is now ready for a true collected canter and I am NOT here for that apparently. I ride him too low in front and I need to get his neck up and out and then put his butt down. She told me to bring him up... more... even more... no he's not off the bit, bring him UP MORE. Okay just bring him OFF the bit then. Yes that's good. No don't put his neck down. That's good. No he's not off the bit.

I rode him down to the mirror and saw the canter I had and was like HOLY SHIT. This is a horse who had a lateral canter at 3 years old. Yes he does need to be ridden up and out like that. It gets his front end out of the way of his hind legs so they can come under further.

Like up here, which feels off the bit but instead of putting his
neck down to get him rounder, I need to bring him up in
the shoulder

The left lead needed to be a bit straighter, so we schooled that down the long side and on the circle with a bit of renvers. The renvers really helped get him straight and I could feel a huge difference in the quality of canter. It was much more on round wheels and it was almost like TC took a deep breath like oh phew she's letting me go straight. Sorry pony!

Tanya had me do some canter to walk transitions and walk to canter transitions on the circle. The upwards were good, TC still needs confidence in them just because he does tend to stutter a little bit. Like oh you... oh the canter, you want that gait? okay... wait, yes, cantering? And that just takes time for the horses to get confident. The downwards though, they were on point. Turns out when the horse is not diving onto his forehand, the canter is able to collect to the speed of the walk, and that makes for some good downward transitions.

We played with a pseudo-school canter, bringing TC nearly on the spot and then addressing the issues that this caused. Like many horses, TC wants to get a bit stacked up and prop with his hind legs rather than sit. Tanya wanted me to send him out of it to quicken him and get his inside hind leg further under, then ask again. She also wanted me to stay a little back in my upper body since I climbed forward when he would prop. That alone made a huge difference. And we had some really nice moments where TC was essentially on the spot but still super soft through his topline. Tanya said that he was pretty naturally talented at the collection at the canter (!!!). I hope this means the pirouettes will be easier to put on him than on Rico!

I can see now how much this horse is going to need to come up
and out at the canter but it's hard to ride because it feels so bad

Back in trot, we did a really fun exercise. Tanya wants TC's lateral work in trot to be a bit more connected through his whole body. He tends to get a little bit tight and loses cadence, especially in the haunches-in. So we stayed on the circle and did shoulder-in to haunches-in to renvers, focusing on making sure that his trot stayed big and loose and he didn't get too locked in his neck. It's so funny, when Rico would lock up, it was really unpleasantly heavy and I'd want to fix it right away to avoid that feeling. TC locks up and he just feels slightly less good, so I haven't been quick to correct it. I need higher standards!

The circle exercise felt AMAZING. I could really feel him step into both reins and his trot got much harder to sit. My abs were killing me, especially because in my power lifting class on Friday, I had done our cash out of 100 sit ups without stopping since I had to get going. I was still a bit sore (just in my core) on Monday... so more sit ups for me. But still, we're definitely doing this exercise again. I've never felt his haunches-in so cadenced.

I was so so sore during this ride that I was struggling with the
posting trot mechanic, ugh

To end, we did some walk pirouettes. Tanya was super happy with the mechanic, but wants him quicker. TC is a very deliberate horse. If you ask him for something, he wants to do it right so sometimes he slows down and really thinks about it. This leads to him being a quick learner, but it also leads to him losing impulsion in some movements, such as the lateral work. He really wants to slow down and scootch through it. But man this horse was easy to put walk pirouettes on, clicker training for the win!

To quicken the walk pirouettes, Tanya had me put him on an endless walk pirouette again and push him a step forward if he slowed down. She also wants him generally more buzzy in the walk work. That makes me feel slightly unsafe, but this is Second level and I'm going to feel unsafe. That's how much he needs to be ON.

I'm glad we got some stuff to work on in them, I kind of just take for granted that they're always good for the level we're at. But honestly, why not have walk pirouettes worthy of PSG when we debut at Second? So we'll be doing a lot more of them from now on.

That tail is just ridiculous

In the end I wanted some answers about lead changes. I've put changes on my fair share of horses, but I want to get better at it and that means learning from someone who has put them on WAY MORE horses. I told Tanya that we'd been playing with them maybe once a quarter for a couple days at a time. He very clearly knows the difference between counter canter and lead change, he does not anticipate the change (have I mentioned how much I love this horse lately?), he does it on the aid when I ask. He is, however, not reliably clean at this time. So I haven't been doing them very much.

I asked what her prerequisites were. They were the same as mine, which is great! But she said that she wanted me to teach him to change out of the more collected canter. And that was news to me. I've always taught horses out of a... not a less collected canter step, but something that has more power over the ground. We talked about that and I revealed that the vast majority of horses I'd worked with were much smaller movers than TC. And that was it, TC's canter is huge, he needs to learn out of a much much more collected canter. And for that, he needs to be very comfortable in his almost-school canter.

He's the coolest

Tanya also wanted me to work more on the counter canter. She said that she typically doesn't want the counter canter "perfect" before introducing the changes, since that can make life difficult. But TC has already been introduced to the changes, and that means I can get that counter canter pretty perfect now.  So it's a fall/winter of counter canter, collecting the canter, simple changes, and me getting used to riding him up and out at the canter.

She didn't give me a timeline, but depending on how winter goes, I'd like to have them on in the early spring. I want to give him about six to eight months of doing them well at home before I ask in the show ring, and we're on a very tentative track to debut at Third at the end of next year. I dunno, there's so much that could go wrong before then.

He's such a grown up these days

Overall, as always, it was an AMAZING lesson. Tanya remarked how far TC and I had come this summer. I only started riding with her in May. We've gone from scoring a 61% last year at 1-1 to a 73% at 1-2 (and a ton of scores 68%+). His gaits are totally different and every single lesson I walk away wondering how I managed to own such an amazing animal. More on that later with this new blog hop going around!

I told her thank you for believing in us. It's so refreshing to have a trainer who really believes in us, especially him. He's such a cool horse!