A Ten Trot and a Nothing Canter

I had a lesson last Thursday AND Saturday! It's really quite helpful to take two lessons in a row. My trainer only comes down to my area once a month and she stays for three days and then is gone for another month. At first I only took one lesson because I like having time in between lessons to practice, but then last time I tried two lessons and was sold. We can make so much progress in just a few days and that holds for much longer.

The other thing it does, is allow me to have a bad lesson and then have Tanya come back the next lesson (two days later) with a plan. Today's post is about the bad lesson. well, more about what I learned about myself as a rider from the bad lesson, tomorrow's will be about the solution.

Food time after our lesson

TC has been an interesting horse to develop. As much as our scores have been good and he's been relatively happy to do dressage as his sport, his instincts and conformation are not great for the sport/ In other words, he's not at all purpose bred for the sport of dressage. His main redeeming quality is that he's mentally exactly what I want in a dressage horse. He loves to work, doesn't get bored doing the same thing over and over again, wants to please, and man, when he sees a dressage court, he lights the fuck up. He also loves crowds and judges booths. Mentally, this horse is meant to do amazing things. And honestly, his trot is pretty great too.

Buuuuuut I've got almost no canter to work with over here. And that came out hardcore on Thursday.

The main issue is one I've had before: when I put my leg on, TC unloads his hind legs rather than having them jump further under himself. Sometimes it leads to him unloading them enough where he starts bucking. So Thursday, I picked up TC's canter and was like OH NO because he was really behind the leg. When we start in that place, things don't go well, and they didn't.

SO is turning me into a cyclist, and I'll let him if we can keep
going to places like this

I think Tanya didn't realize how bad it was, because she had me start to collect his canter, which IS what needs to happen, sure, but not when he's so behind my leg that every time I put my leg on, he throws his head back at me and starts bucking.

I immediately was frustrated. This is a major pet peeve of mine, breaking at the canter, or more, feeling like the horse is about to break all the time. My technique for this is to basically go medium canter to collected canter, then shoot the horse into medium when they threaten to break. My favorite saying when I'm teaching is "does X live in Y?" or, does a medium canter live in your collected canter? Does a stretch circle live in your working trot? Does a collected trot live in your medium trot? And so on.

Tracey was very against this technique. All TC had to do to go from carrying to pushing is stall out while carrying. I get it... I do... but I can't emphasize enough how much I hate the feeling he gives me when he stalls out. Her solution was to get over it, and in my Thursday lesson, Tanya a little bit went in that direction too and I got my hackles a bit up.

The whole trail is paved, lets the SO road bike
and me not be scared of cars

She did have something good to say about my tendencies when we get to this place. I let go of his face, get too "up" (I'm a very up rider generally), and try to kick him out of it ASAP. She encouraged me to keep the contact even if that means he breaks for real, and to keep him softer over his topline in general in the collection.

The idea was that he can't come against me as aggressively (and can't buck) if he's over his back, so no matter what, keep him over his back, and in order to do that, I need to keep the contact. Okay, point made, I'm on board with that.

But it was still a shit ride. We tried to do some haunches-in at the canter, lots of bucking. We tried to do lead changes. More bucking and a lot of anticipation. Nothing is physically wrong with him, this is definitely a training issue (he's done this for years, we've treated him for ulcers, he's seen the vet a lot, he's seen chiro-vet a lot, his nutrition is dialed in, etc), he really honestly doesn't understand that he has to jump under himself when my leg comes on.

THIS PLACE IS SO PRETTY OMG

I walked away pretty disillusioned. It was one of the first times I started seriously wondering if TC wouldn't do the FEI levels for me, if Third is where we end because beyond that, we HAVE to have a collected canter for pirouettes. I got a bit panicky thinking that I'd take ANOTHER horse to the Grand Prix who I had to hoist through half the movements. No thanks. If that starts happening, TC is for sale.

So I considered canceling my Saturday lesson and just riding him on my own, using my medium exercise to help him stay more forward in the canter. BUT Tanya's last words to me were telling me again to get a piaffe on him and that this will help the canter quite a lot. I asked whether she could show me her technique for it and she said yes, let's do that on Saturday. So I figured I'd go Saturday, get her take on putting the piaffe on at the very least.

Luckily, Saturday was pretty amazing, and we fixed the canter issue to boot! But more on that tomorrow.