Tone at the Bottom

Finally on Thursday I had a normal ride on TC, it was so fun! I'm not sure what got into him this week but I think he just needed to get it out of his system with a lot of cantering on Wednesday. Who knows.

I could tell TC was feeling quiet when I was able to do the girth up almost all the way upon walking out of the barn. I hopped on him at the mounting block at the top of the arena and walked down through the stream each way before going into the covered arena. This time, there was only one semi-private lesson going on and one person hacking. Two lessons is a bit tough to navigate around, but one is super doable, especially when TC is all chill like.

It was nice to have a break in the rain!

We finally got to warm up on a longer rein, getting him to stretch over his back. My main concern recently is the corkscrew of course, and I could really feel it tracking right. Not only does it feel like we're falling over the right shoulder, in the stretch, he wants to curl and get too light in it. Clearly he doesn't feel comfortable stretching over his back and into the bridle evenly in that direction.

After stretching, I played with a few figure-8s and spiraling in and out. This was mostly focusing on the corkscrew, which I think I've talked about a lot. But I feel like we're making decent progress with it.

I've been thinking a lot about where he is at, and Thursday I focused more on where I was at. I am at the root of the problem of course. So I thought about engaging my right upper inner thigh, my left oblique, drawing my left thigh off of him, putting my left calf on him, lifting with my right calf, and just thinking about being more present on the right side of his body. We had some amazing work to the left, where I felt like I could really get my left calf on him to engage his left hind leg. And we could turn! And his trot got loftier! Magic.

From there, I went sitting and worked on transitions. I think if Tanya had one main complaint about us, it's that our transitions are the fucking worst. I'm not sure what it is about this horse and changing gaits, but it's an ordeal for him. It's either very abrupt and off the bit, or it takes forever but he stays round. The trot to walk is probably the worst, but trot to canter and walk to canter are also questionable.

Wandering after the crazy rainstorm on Wednesday

I think part of it has to do with me losing tone in transitions, something I've also been accused of doing at the bottom of push-ups and squats. Hrm. The other part I think is me overriding it and overthinking it. So I focused on maintaining my tone (especially in that damn left oblique which continues to plague me) and not letting him drop into walk by dropping my calf off of him and clamping with my thigh. It made a huge difference!


I took that into the canter work and did a little spiral in and out before playing with a couple of canter to walk transitions. He's pretty good at these, though I do feel like there's still a bit of a black box moment where there's some vacancy in his rideability in the transition. So like I'll ride him in the canter I want him to ride in, and sometimes the transition is amazing. Other times... it's still clean in that there are no trot steps and balanced in that he doesn't transition into a less balanced walk or anything, but the throughness could be better. It's a 6.5 rather than an 8. We can do 8, so let's do 8.

But I constantly have this realization in this transition that he doesn't need to do a million of them to get them good, he knows how to do them right, what he needs is to get really comfortable in the collected canter, in the really accessible place. THAT is the issue with this transition, it has nothing to do with the transition and everything to do with the canter.

Lots of water but it drains well

We ended with even more stretching, where he was way better in it to the right. I was glad to see that!

Today I head to Sacramento for the day, so TC gets the day off (and shoes!) and then I'll be back on him for the weekend. I have an email into a new trainer about riding with her on Monday, but that might not happen, we'll see.

I think TC and I are hanging in there without lessons, but I am eager to get another lesson just because I like them!