Blowing Up the Balloon

Last Thursday evening I had a lesson! It was not with Tracey, it was with Tanya, the trainer I worked with when I was living up north in 2018.

One of the reasons I haven't been able to ride with Tanya is that 1) she only comes down here once a month and 2) she is coming from far away, so her travel fee plus ring fees make her lessons a bit expensive. I need more than one lesson a month and I wasn't so great financially at the beginning of last year, so I got pulled off the regular list and ended up riding with Tracey.

Now I'm struggling because I am so busy on the weekends that I can barely ride with Tracey once a month AND TC is practically asleep at Tracey's barn (and Tracey doesn't travel to teach) so it's really affected the way I've been riding him (underpowered). So I figure if I'm only going to get a lesson a month anyway, I'll go back to ride with Tanya and see what the difference is.

Some shoulder-in, a little stutter but then super easy

Even ignoring how good he was in the lesson, I was VERY proud of TC that evening. He self loaded right after getting fed his dinner, was taken to a barn he hasn't been at in five years, and it was cold and getting dark. He was FOOT PERFECT the entire time. No spooking (other than wanting to stop and curiously glance down the barn aisle that you could see from the covered arena), no bolting, no leaping, no bucking. Nothing. He just buckled down and did his work.

Kate came with one of her students to watch and I got a ton of video! Love my friends.

Lol at him looking down the barn aisle and hesitating for a stride

We started out and I told her that I was struggling to keep him up into the bridle and to keep him up through his withers. She had some really interesting things to say about that, most of which was that I needed more responsiveness to my aids to get him to get up there and stay up there. He needs to get narrower and that in itself will engage his thoracic sling, as will getting his hind legs more engaged. There's not a specific aid to get him to lift through the withers, it's a consequence of other important things. Excellent!

In response to that, after we got him really forward and engaged and he felt amazing, I told her that I'm still battling some muscle memory from when he was a wild idiot. When he gets going that forward and is that hot off my aids, I can feel him surge and come up through his back... exactly how he feels before he bucks. So I've taught myself to quickly shut it down. So every time I put him there, I shut it down.

And this is why having Tanya is so great, because she won't let me shut him down, the moment she sees me do it, she yells at me to kick and go. I'm a good student (well...) and I started ignoring what I was feeling and just DOING what she told me to.

The result was better work than I've ever felt this horse give me. Holy shit. There might be an FEI horse living in that little hippopotamus.

Just trotting around like a fancy horse

The biggest takeaway is that he just needs to be more inflated. Everything is there, it's just dull. Add spark and trust my half halt to keep him from getting his hind leg out behind him (one of my biggest fears is running him off his feet).

It's like he's a deflated balloon. I've spent a really long time patching up the holes and getting the balloon really structurally sound (basics), but now I'm looking at it wondering why it's kind of soggy. It has nothing to do with any more patches that are needed and everything to do with how much air is in it. I just need to blow the balloon up!

Inflated and ready to scare me a bit, yay!

Finally, we chatted about training plans. I really want weekly lessons. I need them to be able to do what I want to do with this horse because he is just about too much horse for me to feel comfortable getting him this pumped up on my own. I hesitate and I need help to overcome that lingering fear of what he feels like when he's going the way he should.

Tanya mentioned that she herself takes Skype lessons and is willing to teach them too. Kate and I chatted and we're going to start figuring out how we can arrange this. This could be a game changer for both of us, be able to ride with one of the best trainers in Northern California in the comfort of our own barns and during the week.

Tanya said she has a Pixio for this and my heart sunk a little bit. Soloshot offers a live version, but you have to pay for it and as we saw from my gifs recently, Soloshot doesn't always keep me in frame. I don't want to pay for a lesson where my trainer can't see me (the money is one thing, it'd frustrate me as a trainer so I don't want to do that to Tanya). I also don't want to buy a Pixio not knowing if I am going to even be able to get the streaming to work.

Haunches-in looking pretty good for a horse who really told
me that this was an impossible movement for him

SO I talked to Kate and we agreed to get a video camera (which you can eventually hook up to the future Pixio) and just be each others' Pixios while we figure out the streaming part of it. Then if it works, I'll look into getting a Pixio. It'll end up paying for itself in less than a year given how expensive it is to haul up to Tanya and pay travel/ring fees when she's in town (though I will probably do that). So I'm not fussed about spending the money on it. I put together a yearly budget for lessons and it saves me more than you'd expect.

Taking remote lessons would be so amazing, I could switch barns whenever I felt like it without impacting my training situation. I can take lessons during the week without having it take any longer than a normal ride (so then my weekends are free to make money to pay for these lessons). Lessons would be more affordable without paying the travel fee, haul-in fee, or gas for my truck, plus just the time of hauling back and forth and the rigid nature of clinic days/times. And I could ride with anyone I felt like riding with (although I'm a stay-on-the-bus kind of person). The major downside is that my trainer wouldn't be able to get on TC (not a problem, I almost never put trainers on my horses) or make any physical changes to me (not a problem, I have a local biomechanics expert I can ride with) except the once a month that I ride with her in person.


I'm stoked! Doing research on camera now and then Kate and I are going to meet soon to try out this setup. Fingers crossed it works for us. I can't wait to be on a regular training program again. Third level, here we come (with a stop at Second level first!).