A Little Bit Sideways

Today TC gets to see the chiro vet! I'm really excited to get his back in gear (his little roach area popped up recently) and then ask her other unrelated questions.

The weekend was relatively light TC-wise. On Friday afternoon, I drove north to move in with Peony for two nights. Saturday was an event (I'm the dressage trainer but I coach at events on occasion, I don't mind) and then Sunday I taught some lessons. The event went well and it was super fun to see Nicole too! We all went to eat delicious dumplings and noodles before going to bed super early that night. Lessons went pretty well too!

This is the cat that adopted Peony, she's really cute!

I rode TC on Sunday night and he felt great. I've been focusing a ton on the quality of the gaits recently and I decided on Sunday to see how some movements rode.

His gaits are feeling really good, I've been working hard on his canter and it's definitely getting easier for him to collect it and transitions in and out, both from walk and from trot, are getting better. And the trot itself is feeling great most of the time. I'm getting pickier about the quality of the throughness and his responsiveness to all the aids and he's stepping it up big time.

I decided to make it a lateral work day at both trot and canter, so here's the breakdown.

View from what we did the next day

Shoulder-in at the trot is feeling good, but it's definitely not as big and fancy as it was last year at times. I believe that it's because I'm asking for a more uphill balance and he can't be fancy and uphill at the same time just yet, he has to stay coiled and learn that impulsion is more than just pushing himself over the ground, it's pushing himself upward too. So that will come, I'm sure.

As an aside, I can't wait to get a passage on this guy because I think it will help us out a lot in terms of the fancy shoulder. But if I put it on too soon, I'm going to lose his hind legs out behind him. He is the epitomy of needing a solid piaffe first before I get the bamboo out. If I teach him passage now, he'll never piaffe.

Haunches-in at the trot felt okay, though he struggles with the amount of angle necessary sometimes. It was easier one way than the other and I can't for the life of me remember which. The biggest issue I'm facing is one I faced on Rico: he struggles to give me the angle so to get it on the tracks I want it on, I'm letting him fall out through his shoulder. This is extremely apparent in the half pass.

He is the best trail horse

He's still very green at half pass, I can count the number of times I've really worked on it. I'm not as strong at half pass as I am at other things (I like to think my strengths are connection and impulsion, also walk pirouettes apparently, maybe I'm wrong) so I can't seriously say what *his* issues are without relating them right back to me. Like Rico, he struggles with the bend in half pass, it feels like it's either a diagonal line or haunches-leading at this point. We'll work it out. Tracey will fix us right up!

None of these weaknesses inspired me to not try the movement at the canter. I find half pass in canter to be a much easier movement for me. The horse does not have any crossover at the canter, it's just pushing the horse sideways during the moment of suspension. So I revved him up and did just that.

He's quite good at it to the right, I think that's because I naturally sit better at the canter that way. To the left, we struggled a bit but we did get some good moments in between him thinking that he might attack the shit out of two pigeons in the corner we were riding it from.

Looking out at the valley

I think this weekend at my lesson, I'll ask Tracey about the haunches-in. I do want to be able to do 2-3 this year if possible, and that plus the counter canter are all that are missing in my lessons. She's given us a ton of info on the shoulder-in, a good lesson on the simple changes, and she told me his walk pirouettes were 8s and I am still on cloud nine about that.

I'm getting excited to show at Second not because it's Second and I wasn't sure if we'd make it, but because I think we might actually do pretty well. My goal is always to walk out with 68%+ and I think there's a chance we may nab that at least at 2-1. But hey, a couple of 8s on the walk pirouttes at 2-3 and I can botch all kinds of other stuff. Like the medium canter, which I am not sure I'm going to actually ride, and the medium trot, which is still terrible.