Schooling All of Third Level

On Friday evening, I had a lesson! It was the first lesson since early March, where if you remember, TC bucked through the entire two rides with Tanya.

I think Tanya was happy to see that TC bucked zero times in our ride. He did, however, get so amped that he bolted out of the dressage court with me. I don't blame him, it was windy and he'd had a day off the day before and the girth debacle the day before that.

The lesson was fabulous as usual, sometimes I feel it's Tanya and TC working together and I'm just there paying for it and trying not to get in their way. Not because she's riding him or anything, but because he gives me the feeling of being like "SEE JUST DO IT THAT WAY MOM, thanks auntie Tanya, I've been trying to explain that to her" but he's so sweet I can't imagine him sassing me like that.

Baby TC turning from this into something that can be ridden
in canter half pass is amazing to me. Also look how big I look
on him here! 

We began a little late because my Soloshot decided that despite working perfectly for months and months, it wanted to low key film the trees instead of me. Then I got it sort of working and TC bopped it with his nose. Of course he did. So it recalibrated again and then refused to take any video of me the whole lesson. Great.

Because I had only walked when Tanya got there, she had to see what she immediately thought was a very ineffective warm up.

I tend to warm TC up on a long rein because he loves stretching, then we canter on a longish rein and then I pick him up and we get to work. I figure it's good for him to stretch down because it was such a hard thing for him, good to warm up his muscles. Tanya wanted me to do a more aggressive warm up though, which is fair. She had me doing steep leg yields, both shoulder-in and haunches-in and did some pretty intense shortenings and lengthenings. I do have to admit, when we popped into canter, his initial quality of canter was much better than normal.

Seriously this canter has taken a very long time

She had us canter left first, I usually canter right because he's just trickier to the left. Sure enough, he was pleasant at the canter left but then she had me ask him to do literally anything else and he came back against me with his neck. She was not pleased, she cited the submission part of the collective marks and basically told me that he wasn't through if I couldn't put my leg on or turn him on a smaller figure without him backing off. The way I was correcting it wasn't effective enough and she had me essentially bend and keep him bent (vs my annoying new tendency to bend him and then lose the outside shoulder, so then I straighten him, and rinse, repeat, it's not great), then follow through on the outside side to push him up and over into contact.

Once I did this, TC was like "yep sure" and everything felt way way easier. He almost seemed to take a deep breath and settle into work much easier. She then had me change directions through the walk and we looked at the much higher quality right lead canter. She was happy with where that was at and we just did a few things to rev him up and get him a bit straighter.

From there, we chatted about where TC was at. I said we were schooling canter half pass and that was going okay but not show ready yet. I also mentioned the changes were rough and she said she was expecting that. I told her about the kicking change too, but she said she didn't really mind kicking changes. I explained that the fact that TC and Rico are the only two that have ever done it to me was making me insane and she's like "yep that's enough to drive you crazy, but try not to worry about it" and we were off.

His typical left lead canter, just not quite through

We started working on the half pass left by heading down the long side in haunches in. TC immediately got stacked up and tried to break, Tanya noted that he just didn't seem to understand what was expected of him. We came back on the circle and she had me put his haunches in there, which helped a little bit, then she had me draw his shoulder out to help him understand the positioning. That caused a bit of a breakthrough moment and our half pass was way better.

Still though, he really struggles to understand how to move from right to left at the canter on the left lead. So she had me go from H to A, put him very straight, then put him in a counter positioning and basically push him sideways toward centerline. This worked FABULOUSLY well and she told me to do it until it was easy, continue the haunches-in on the circle until that's easy, then combine the two and I've got a canter half pass.

The right half pass was fabulous out of the gate, she just wanted to make sure that I kept the collection in the half pass rather than let him get long. Great!

A much better left lead canter, much more lifted through his
body and responsive to my aids

We kind of randomly put in changes throughout and she had some complaints. First is that I sometimes walk him after the changes and she told me that if I keep doing that, he won't learn to jump through the change and that's an environment ripe for kicking. I loved that thought. I tend to walk after the changes sometimes for two reasons: 1) a reward for TC being a good boy and 2) to prevent him from thinking that he can get strong and use the change as a way to take off with me. He's confirmed enough now where both of those are unnecessary.

We ended with going down the long side, doing a half circle at E/B to X, then half passing to H/M and immediately doing a flying change out of the half pass. He's never done that but he took to it okay, except the kicking change was on full display!

Tanya blew my mind with this. As a reminder, I rode with a lot of trainers who couldn't figure out why I caused Rico to kick at my right leg. We just chocked it up to him being old and this being a habit that was caused by who knows what early on. Then TC started kicking at that same leg in the same way and I began to go crazy.

Both are improved from this canter before

Tanya told me two things: first, I keep my right leg too far back in the left lead canter, especially in the half pass. The half pass aid is not the outside leg behind the girth, it's the outside rein and outside thigh. THEN she said I don't keep my internal rotation on the right leg especially as it goes to swing forward... causing my spur to graze his barrel on the right side.

She had me go back and keep my right leg quite forward and she told me not to move it an INCH as I asked for the change, just to swing my left leg. I did and he gave me the best left to right change he's ever given me.

I brainstormed afterward with Kate. Rico is exceptionally wide in his barrel, so I was a tiny flea on his back even though he was only 16.2 and I'm 5'6 with long legs. I wore big spurs with him because he was lazy. TC is not wide at all, but he has a deep girth, so I look like a tiny flea on him too even though he too is only 16.2. I wear big spurs with him because I had those in my locker and I'm a good rider with good body control, I can keep my spur out of his side. And I can... mostly.

Other horses I've put changes on/ridden changes on have been either smaller or narrower than my two big bodied horses. So it was all just a coincidence that MY horses were kicking at my leg when others weren't. It was just the size and shape of their barrel.

So now this is my project, I'm going to work to get control over my right leg and fix it before doing too many more changes with TC. If I still have this issue, I'll switch spurs to something smaller. I love my spurs and how he goes with them in every other bit of work we do, but I am NOT going to be dealing with a kicking change anymore.

Rico's left to right change was always quite good

You can see him kicking at me and also see why, DAMNIT how
did NONE of the trainers I rode with for YEARS not figure this out

Just that last thirty seconds of help with the change was enough to make me SO HAPPY with the lesson, let alone having a huge breakthrough with the canter half pass and throughness to the left. And I was in the lesson getting a little frustrated with my lack of collection in the right half pass and realized... we're doing canter half pass in a lesson! This is so exciting! He's schooling all of Third level now and it's so fun!