Double Bridle Considerations

So, the good news since I chatted with Tanya about a month ago is that TC is WAY more into the bridle than he has been, potentially ever. Sometimes it almost sucks. 

It's gotten me thinking a lot about whether a double bridle might help us out. I wanted him in the snaffle for sure through Third level because I've heard from numerous judges that they double take when they see horses at Third level in a double. He is also so backed off the contact in the snaffle that I didn't think it'd be helpful. 

The SO and I carved pumpkins! Mine
was obviously TC with a weird chin

Now though, he's downright heavy in the contact, which is fabulous, and he also tends to get himself a bit stacked up and over strong. I have a pony I'm riding right now that does the same thing and it's very easy for me to provide the pony support in the stacked up-ness and help him find the contact again, then he goes back to the connection and everything is great. I am... not strong enough to provide that support to TC. I need like 6 inches and 75lbs on me to do that I think, he's not a small horse. So that made me consider that maybe I could ride him as I normally do in the bradoon, then pick up the curb when he gets a little over strong to help him find the bradoon again. 

On Tuesday, I decided to just throw him in my double and see what happened. He's carried it a few times, both on the trails (2019) and around the ranch (2018). 

He wore this exact bridle!

I think my biggest takeaway is how unbelievably complicated this horse can be. I picked up the bradoon and he reached for it okay (not as good as in his snaffle though), so then I touched him with the curb and he curled immediately. Cool, cool. So the entire ride was pressing him into the bradoon, using the curb when absolutely necessary, then throwing it at him when he didn't stay into the bradoon when it was used. 

This made the ride way more mentally challenging than physically challenging. TC is usually a good mixture of the two. Not heavy in the bridle, although at the canter recently he's been rather heavy, and not a horse you have to kick every stride unless you do and then he absolutely is (he is happy to do whatever you want him to do, including slowing down when you nag him). Challenging enough mentally but not so much that I feel like my timing has to be perfect or else. 

It shifted him completely over to a mental ride, which was fun but it hurt my brain. 

It's a pretty browband at least!

The biggest change I noticed was in the canter, which was a no-duh moment given how much more physically challenging he is in the canter vs how mentally challenging he is in the trot. Having that curb DID allow me to push him more in the canter and it made a huge difference in my ability to ride him positively forward. 

We were able to ride a lot of tempi changes, a lot of forward and back, and a bunch of haunches-in down the long side. The changes were SO much better, like way more through because I would put my curb rein at my fingertips and let him hit it gently if he came up in the poll. The forward and back was way better because I could get him back a lot faster, in a more finessed way, but especially without as much right rein, which he's been hanging on recently. The haunches-in was way easier too as he didn't get as stacked up in the neck and therefore didn't get as long in his body. 

The trot was... fine. I will say hands down that I prefer him in the snaffle in the trot. He was so backed off of it that I ended up kind of dropping the curb. And the bradoon was a french link, which he backs off of already, so that wasn't doing us any favors. But we still did end with some good work as he got more tolerant of the french link. 

The current setup, although it's a little
dirtier now

My thought is to ride him in it once a week or so to help me work on the canter at a higher level. I was hoping that the work in the double would help him in the snaffle, but it seems to have made almost no difference at least this one time. Oh well. I definitely don't want to ride him in it more than that, nor do I want to show him in it any time soon. I still think he's a little too green for it. 

Also, I think I'd like to try other bits to see about getting him super comfortable in the double. Neue Schule, who makes his snaffle bit (turtle top eggbutt), has some great recommendations on their website. I think I'd like to do a bit fitting for that though, rather than just guessing. So I'm asking around to see if anyone is going to put one on any time soon and in the mean time, I'll borrow some bits from dressage extensions and see if they make TC a little more comfortable in the double. 

Piecing it Together

I was at a show with clients this last weekend and had a blast, they did really well! It did not make me itch to get back into the show ring any time soon though, so I think my plan to wait to show until winter is the right one, even if we might need to warm up in the rain sometimes. 

Even though I just posted about my lesson yesterday, it happened late last week and I rode TC Friday through Sunday and then I'll ride him today after he gets shoes. 

My ride on Friday was short but I wanted to drive home what we did in my lesson in the walk and trot. That's where we make it or we break it. It was fairly successful, a bit underpowered though. He honestly felt way more "drapey" with his neck that day so I'll take it.

Saturday, I just never got there. It was mildly depressing. I thought I got there and then looked at the video and it was a big fat nope. Oh well. 

Getting there

Sunday though... Sunday was the closest we've come to getting what we get in Tanya's lessons. I realized Saturday that I didn't spend enough time in step 1 and then overpowered him and he got rigid in his neck and dropped his butt out behind him to deal. So on Sunday, I did a truly insane amount of lateral work and bending exercises in walk, then the same in trot, before I added power. 

It wasn't so pretty. Once I challenged us with a lot of bending exercises, I realized how unbelievably stuck this horse can get when changing bend. So if you're just riding around, you may notice, sure, he may get a little tight changing direction, but how often are we really doing that? It's easy to overlook, especially because of how soft he already is. The difference between 0% rigidity to 5% rigidity feels like going from no contact to an okay contact. Until you ride a hundred changes of direction and realize that it happens every damn time and gets worse and worse. Well, fuck. 

So we did steep leg yields, serpentines, shoulder-in, circles, among other exercises, one after the other. I didn't care about forward except that I didn't have to kick him. I just cared that he stayed pressed into contact evenly wherever I put him. 

Canter left on Saturday

I spent way more time on this than Tanya would have had me spend, but by the time I stopped and cycled power through him, it definitely was better. Not perfect. There's still a missing piece there. But I was able to actually RIDE him through some test movements and not feel like I was pushing an overpowered sewing machine on a highway onramp hoping to merge. 

The highlight of the day was him giving me his very first set of four tempis! I had worked a little on the changes with Tanya's advice to quicken my aid and keep him supple. I need to get him confident with her favorite exercises (changes on the rail and changes over centerline on serpentines), but I couldn't resist trying the tempi changes. 

So coming into this week I am feeling much better about everything given how good the ride was on Sunday. I still want to get better/quicker/less disorganized with the warm up, but the fact that by the end of the ride, it feels like... 80% there, that's good news! 

Punch Through

I tried writing a few posts last week but just couldn't. Being in this weird place where sometimes I feel like we're getting somewhere with the throughness issue only to watch the same ride on video and know that something is still missing, well, it sucks. 

Trainer came out on Thursday for her monthly clinic and fixed everything within ten minutes and then did her typical trainer thing like "okay what's the problem" and I obviously hate that. Even though I literally did it to a client earlier in the day. Hopped on her horse, fixed everything in one transition, horse was then perfect, rider gets back on and is like WHAT THE ACTUAL F- and I'm like "yeah I fail to see where the issue is" and then my trainer comes out, says five words to me and TC immediately is my dream horse. 

These aren't from the lesson, he looked better in
the lesson!

I did pin her down and make her discuss more with me where she thinks I'm going wrong with this stuff. She gave me a protocol that I'm going to try to put to use this weekend and next week.

1) Gain access to his topline

2) Punch through with power

3) Half halt for engagement

I've been doing a lot of #2 and #3. In fact, she was really happy with TC's canter, yelling at me to half halt/slow down for basically the first time ever. 

It's the first one that is the current issue. TC gives me no access to his topline (just in general, imagine riding on the top of a Zamboni with most of the screws loose and you'll know what he's like to ride) so when I try to punch through with power, he just gets more rigid. 

Now, if he were an inherently heavy horse, I'd notice it way more, but he feels gooey by default so you think he's soft over his topline. So when he gets rigid, he just feels like he's IN the bridle, which is what we want, right? RIGHT? But no, that's TC's version of leaning. 

So to gain access to his topline, I have to get him more laterally supple, hence her insistence that we do more lateral work in our last conversation. This time, we just worked on a large circle and moved his body around and even moved his neck around a little bit (I was mildly horrified, I'm not a move the neck around kind of person), trying to gain access to his topline so I could cycle energy through it properly. 

Rigidity <> good weight in the reins

Then it's just a matter of doing what I already know how to do, but pushing it well beyond where I normally push it in the trot. I'm happy to positively gallop this horse and the canter only feels good after I do, but the trot feels pretty decent even when he's just kind of bopping around. 

From there, I just coil him up and he's good to go. It literally takes ten minutes and then I have that horse the rest of my ride. We couldn't even walk him on a loose rein to get him to go back to normal. Once I help him out that first time, he's committed to going like that. He likes it, his little ears push forward and he gets all proud of himself. THEN WHY DON'T YOU DO IT ON YOUR OWN FRIEND? I could use an ounce of help from him, I really could. 

We went on in the lesson to work on the canter half passes and lead changes. His changes were great until she stumped him by having me do them down the long side and then on a serpentine. He's only schooled them twice since August so I was expecting a shit storm there. She wants me to be quicker with my aid from right to left and that messed me up big time. We did get it by the end and he did feel way better in them, so I'm currently evaluating everything I know about lead changes right now. 

The half passes rode perfectly because he was where he needed to be to be able to do them. He's honestly a stellar horse when he's like this. I SEE the Prix St George around the corner. The path is so clear to me when he gets in that place. Then the Grand Prix, it's pretty clear too, not as clear, but it's there past a few more plateaus and setbacks. 

It's sweet but it's boring

After the lesson, she set up her Pixio and we tested it out, it worked perfectly well. That confirms that mine must be broken, so it is going back to France for them to fix. Honestly, the company has been shit to work with so I don't have high hopes for this. I want to get it fixed and then I might just sell it. She has had a lot of luck with her Pixio and so that's temping (although it's the same company, and I don't really want to give them more of my money). At this point, I'm thinking of just having someone video me for lessons until Pivo Meet is good enough for lessons, although the idea of having to find someone to video me AND work not only between her schedule and mine, but also the third person's schedule? Tough. So for now, I'm assuming that remote lessons are not a possibility. 

Knowing this, she and I talked after my lesson and we both concluded that I needed more lessons to get past this hump. No remote lesson possibilities means traveling to her barn. It's nearly a 2 hour drive in a car from my barn. It'll be a 2.5+ hour haul. Over a bridge too. What a pain. 

As I drove home, I started to second guess that thought. Drive TC all the way up there a bunch? I'm spoiled in that the farthest I've really travelled for lessons was a little over an hour. More than twice that? And multiple times a month? Plus having to give up days that I could be teaching and making money to spend a whole bunch of money? Ugh. There has to be another way. But I haven't found one yet. I know she can help us fix all this and I know it's not a permanent thing, but I felt rather reluctant. 

Not supple enough, not inflated enough

I talked to Kate about this, Kate is my favorite person to talk to about walls I keep running myself into. She asked me, what am I afraid of, what makes me afraid to commit to TC as my future FEI horse and do whatever it takes to get us there? 

I did that with Rico. I was so hungry. I spent every penny on him and even went into a little bit of debt getting us to my Gold medal. Now I've gotten softer, I am way more reluctant to spend money on lessons and clinics and things that I know will guarantee that I'll get back in the shadbelly next year. And why?

Money and time, I said. I know he can do it, I know I can do it, I know how to get us there. It's a matter of just gritting my teeth, spending the money that I carefully save now, taking the time that I cherish, and making TC's FEI career a priority. So that's what we're doing. Hopefully it doesn't backfire on us!

First Clip of the Year

I was happy that TC kept his clothes on until the end of the winter last year, so I decided to clip him again this year. I was going to try to wait until November, but my god, riding a horse with a winter coat in 90+ degree weather just seems cruel. So I clipped him this weekend. I actually gave him a strip clip on Friday before I rode, then took off the rest of his hair on Saturday. 

This cracked me up, but TC does work
an hour a day for his living at least!

He destroyed his blanket last year, but we literally aren't even dipping into the 40s overnight. It's been a low of 50. So I ordered him a blanket but opted to clip him before it arrived. I wouldn't even have them put a blanket on him overnight when it's only getting down to 53-55. Plus, he's fat and unfit, if he's cold, he can run around and burn some calories. I figure that's more fair than having the guys put a blanket on at 5pm when it's still in the 80s. 

I went on a quest to find a hilarious blanket and did a lot of research on what he'd need being clipped but having it still be so warm. I found a sheet that had otters on it, so I ordered him that one for the nights where it's in the 40s. Then I will order a medium weight blanket (or a liner) if he seems cold under his otter sheet. How will I know he's cold? Well, I got him this bluetooth blanket temperature thing. It was on sale for nearly 50% off and I couldn't help but get that, I'm a sucker for data. I'm always curious about blanketing and I know that we tend to overblanket horses, especially out here in the warmth. 

This blanket, it's amazing, it comes today

TC seemed MUCH more comfortable after his clip. He power walked around the ranch snorting at everything. Actually I had pretty fabulous rides both days with him being so much more forward even though it was in the 90s. He's also back on his LMF Gold, so maybe that's part of it too... now, the question remains, have I created myself a monster this winter? Only time will tell! 

Next Steps with the Saddle

I got my saddle back from our local guy who redid the blocks for me! I managed to get a short ride in it with TC yesterday. It's set to be a medium, but there's not a huge amount of flocking in it and without his half pad, it was a good enough fit for a quick ride to see how I liked it. 

I wanted to get it fit to TC first, but when I saw it, I had this sinking feeling that it'd need more work. The block looked way too small and I started wondering if I should send it directly to Custom and swap out the flap completely. Our local Custom rep has been increasing their prices a bit more than I'm comfortable paying at this point, so I want to make sure that I don't want to send the saddle to Custom before I pay them to change the tree. I'm sure Custom would adjust the tree while they're in there without it costing an additional $350+++ to do it. 

Dear TC, thanks for being so fancy, I hope I can
eventually sit your gaits without the help of a giant
knee block

So, feeling a little blah about it, I stuck it on, made sure it wasn't a horrible fit, and we went for a ride. Immediately, I didn't feel nearly supported enough by the block. I am not a nervous rider, not on TC at least, but it was a little unnerving to feel like I was in a jumping saddle, like a flat one. I did get used to it a little bit though. And TC is obviously perfect so I didn't need the blocks to stay on a buck or anything. 

In walk, posting trot, and canter, I did feel like I could get my thigh on him way easier. Getting my slingshot narrowed has been really important to getting him over his back and that was SO much easier. 

In sitting trot though, it was VERY apparent that the saddle wasn't going to work. I can sit this horse's trot, especially now with the bands, but his trot is no joke. It's enormous. And I absolutely could not get my leg on him without the blocks helping me out. There's just too much scope to his gaits to not have some support on my thigh. There's a reason why neither of us like doing more than walking when I ride him bareback. 

He's the WORST to trot bareback, we both hate it

So now I'm kind of at a loss. I'm going to message the person who worked on it and see if they will make the block larger without charging me any extra (but then I would feel bad soooo yeah). If that's the case, I'll try them again and see if I can be a little more descriptive about what I want. But I also have a message into Custom asking for details of how much it'd be to swap out the flap completely. I know the block I want after all. 

If that's going to be under a number I have in my head, I'll just do that. It'll take months, but at least it'll be exactly the block I want AND they can change the tree to a medium wide while they're in there. I'll get it back and then send my other saddle. 

I won't regret sending it to the local person if I end up doing that. What they gave me was the knowledge that I did indeed want to swap out the blocks. Being able to get my thigh on my horse like that is going to be life changing. Now to just get the exact block I want so I don't create gaits so scopey I can't sit them! 

Shifting the Balance Back

I somewhat unexpectedly had a lesson yesterday! At my own barn! 

So, unfortunately, my remote lesson setup isn't working well, so I'm stuck fighting with it in between lessons with Tanya once a month. Tanya says she's going to bring her setup down next week so we can play with it and see whether my setup is just garbage or whether it's the signal. 

I got a text from Tracey, who I've ridden with on and off for years, saying that she'd be in the area and asking if I wanted a lesson. I guess she's starting to travel to teach again and wants to come back! I hemmed and hawed because TC just adores Tanya and while Tracey is absolutely fabulous, Tanya just GETS this horse in a way no other trainer has, you know?

I responded and said yes, I'd try a lesson but that TC and I are out of shape, just playing with working gaits.

She did a good job with us in 2019

Up until the day before, I wasn't sure the lesson was happening because it just kind of seemed too good to be true that I'd get two lessons so close together. Is that just me? But she confirmed and then showed up mostly on time! Excellent!

There was a minor issue in that I forgot my headphones at home from my conversation with Tanya and Tracey didn't have headphones, so my barn owner got me some (thanks BO! She's awesome). So the lesson started a little late, which was fine because 45 minutes of work was too much anyway. 

He's much more forward at home now

The lesson was great! All my work since Tanya and I chatted has made TC much better in the contact and she really had nothing to say in that department. I told her about him getting btv sometimes and she said that, while that's obviously not desirable in the long term, it was more important for me to keep the connection than to throw the reins away hoping he'd stay in front of the vertical. What we mostly worked on because of the connection being so good was the balance shift from the working gaits to the collected gaits. That was super helpful!

In both walk and trot, I'm very comfortable sending him forward but not always comfortable bringing him back from the forward. This leads to me wanting forward, getting forward, and then just... doing nothing else. So she wanted me to school a wider range of trots, but especially the smaller ones, and insist that he stay on the contact the entire time. I think I ride him forward and over the ground because that's where he feels best in the contact and in front of my leg. But this also leads to him rolling over his shoulder, leaving his feet on the ground for too long, and being a little out behind. 

This really matches what Tanya has me do and is a huge step forward in my understanding of why I can't replicate Tanya's work at home. In lessons with Tanya, we do ride a wide spectrum of trots, and in my work at home, I only ride maybe three quarters of the spectrum (on the bigger side). So it was great to hear all that from a different source. 

He was so dark and cute last year

While that was the main part of the lesson, we also worked on a few other things:

- I am not allowing him to reach around to the left rein when tracking right, my left hand holds him back too much and he just leans in. Wow, that's a shocker, seriously. I've been feeling like he needs to stand up more on that side but didn't realize that my solution was the reason why he couldn't stand up straight. So we worked on getting his left ear to push forward and to get my left side to be a little more elastic. 

- When tracking left, he isn't nearly bending enough and she says that's because he's a little out on the right shoulder. She had me put him into a slight counter flexion, which was a little different than the renvers I normally school to get him more even in the contact, but still worked well and helped him step more into the left rein. 

- Walk pirouettes were good but the left one needs more bend, I tend to fall off the outside on that side. I told her they get 8s and 9s when they don't stick (and that was a fluke) and she said "I believe it, they're very good" but that I also didn't feel like they were entirely rideable and she said "I'd believe that too" 

- In the right lead canter, my shoulders move too much, I need more stability in them to help him stay up in front. She said that the canter (both sides) was quite good though! She wanted him more collected but then I reminded her that he'd cantered like four times in the last month. 

- She wanted me to school more half steps in the transition from trot to walk. I could feel the exact moment he dropped his back (thank you equibands, more on that below) in the transition and that's the trot he's weak on. So she had me ask him to come back to walk, then push him forward when I felt him start to drop his back. 

- She was very happy with how much he went to the bridle that she encouraged me to push his nose out a little more! He first needs to connect and be stretched to the contact, but then, and only when that is reliable and remains reliable, I should push his nose out and reestablish the connection a little lighter. It still needs to feel good and be rideable, because a lot of the time when I go to establish a lighter connection, he retracts the neck or curls, but that's a good goal to have as we start some of the higher level work. 

The right lead has always been tricky

Another thing to note about this lesson is that it was my first ride without the equibands since I got them. And HOLY SHIT. He's a different horse. I have always struggled to sit his trot because of how enormous and bouncy it is and now I can, even though I'm painfully out of shape (I mean, my abs were burning, but I wasn't struggling nearly as much as I expected). Turns out that it was hard to sit because his core wasn't engaged nearly enough. His canter is also totally different, way easier to collect, way easier to maneuver. Just a few weeks of mostly light work in the bands completely changed my horse. Ridiculous. Best couple hundred dollars I've ever spent, I think!

In addition, like I said above, it's given me a whole new feel for when his core is engaged and when it isn't. I was first introduced to this when I had a lesson with Anne and she asked me if I had both long back muscles, I said I wasn't sure. Then she asked me if I had his core. And then I realized that I didn't know what that even felt like but I knew I didn't have them. Now, with the equibands, his core is always engaged, so I can feel the difference very clearly now when he does drop out from under me.

He's always been SUCH a hard horse to feel things on and it's taken me a long time to influence him. He only just this year gave me access to his hind legs. Now I have access to his core. For the longest time, I thought it was just me, until I would get on other horses and be able to pick out exactly where every body part was at any given moment. It's taken a long time but I finally have access to/influence over most of his body! Thank you equibands. 

Back before I could feel his hind legs or his core

Generally it was a fabulous lesson, I wish I had video but that's okay. I think she is going to try to come out twice a month, so that plus my monthly Tanya lessons should hold me over while I'm figuring out my remote setup! 

Bombproofing Clinic

On Sunday, we went to another bombproofing clinic! It was the same people as the last two, which we did back in 2017. Here's the post for the first one and the second one. They're interesting reads just because of how long ago they were! I forgot how much TC wanted to fight with me that year, what a dork. 

This year, obviously, TC is a completely different horse. He and I had three years to work on our relationship, his reactiveness, my nerves, and so on. He has been my rock for about a year and a half now, being a solid partner in everything I've thrown at him. And I've thrown a lot at him. Trail riding during the pandemic has been wild, we've showed at many new facilities, and we've done some working equitation clinics too! Everything I give to TC now is met with curiosity and a relaxed attitude. 

Probably my favorite picture from the
clinic!

So I could not wait to see how he was at this clinic. And obviously he was absolutely brilliant!

There were fifteen of us on horses (including some people I actually knew! We were not the only english pair there) and three instructors also on horses, so seventeen additional horses in the arena with TC. They broke us out into groups of five so we could work with an instructor on each individual obstacle. 

The first one for our group was the mattress. TC walked confidently over it on a loose rein and then had to stand and wait while the other horses all worked out what the fuck that was. He was pretty patient about waiting, but he kept looking over at the other groups doing other obstacles and definitely seemed envious. 

From there, the same thing happened with the box of trash (devoid of trash at the beginning), TC walked confidently through it on a loose rein and then had to wait while other horses were nervous about it. We went back over the mattress a couple of times and then stood around waiting until the instructor (who remembered him from three years ago) told me to just go play with the obstacles on our own because TC was clearly not going to need any help with them. And that's what we did! 

He was so incredibly smug all day, he
kept looking back at me with this
expression on his face lol

Literally every obstacle I pointed him at, he did confidently and on a loose rein, which he neck reined on a fair amount despite me never actually teaching him. 

He walked quietly over a mattress, a tarp, several bridges, and through garbage. He walked quietly through the car wash and the noodle walls. He pushed a cart, he also pulled the cart as well as a 4x4 with a flag on the end. After lunch he happily went back into the arena and walked around with a giant flag, allowing me to put it all over his body, even covering his eyes and he just stood there nosing it. He then let me carry around a huge stuffed bear on his back, both in front of and behind the saddle. He also did the parachute, this time while I was on him, and walked under it three times. 

If you want to see video, there's some on my instagram @alchemy.dressage on the highlights under Sensory Clinic. I'm not compiling anything for this post, sorry!

Pls let me smash (I did and he broke
a bag open, woops)

All that is really cool and fun, but the best part was realizing how great of a horse he is going to be for his future baby brother. 

I've been figuring out how I can have two horses for a while and I think I'm within a year (fingers crossed) of being able to make a move on the purchase of a two year old. My goal will be to spend the horse's two year old year ponying him on trails and doing ground work, plus maybe the bombproofing clinic, before I start the horse at three. I love what I've been able to turn TC into (see above) and I want to start a little earlier this time. 

TC is paramount in my plan to turn the baby into a smaller version of him (with better conformation!) over the years. He is going to be the one who babysits the baby horse on the trail, at new places, and so on. 

Curling so he can dart into the middle
of the group and play with stuff

So while it was great to see how much TC has grown in his own curiosity with objects, it was WAY more fun to see that he was going to make a good big brother one day. 

Horses spooked around him and even into him and he was quiet about it. He sweetly led horses through scary obstacles, letting them bolt past him. He let horses get very close to him when we were carrying scary things so that the other horses could see the object without carrying it themselves. He stood in the way of a few scary things so that we blocked them from other horses' views. 

He seemed to genuinely want to help horses too, which was adorable. He made friends with one horse, then led the horse through the car wash and kept stopping to wait for the horse. Then when the horse cantered past him, he stopped and waited for the horse again. 

So cute

Overall, he far exceeded my expectations for the day! Everyone was taken by him, with people in the stands asking if he was actually afraid of anything (I said no and then he hauled ass away from a water bottle on the rail, lol thanks TC) and a few people coming up to me to ask me how I made him like this. I just said a lot of time, doing clinics like these, and clicker training! 

The instructor remembered him from three years ago. She said she was so excited to see us on the list and that I had done a fabulous job with him the last few years. She reiterated her offer, if TC ever needs a home, she will always be able to place him as a police horse. She says he's exactly the type of horse they look for. 

It feels great to be at this point with him. I'm so proud of him and of how hard we've both worked to get here. He was not an easy young horse, but he was worth it. Days like Sunday really prove that. I can't wait for our next adventure!

Back to Work (Hopefully)

TC is officially coming back into work, hopefully the air quality will remain good. We really need rain! And once again, of course it'd be in 2020 that I was hoping for winter, I usually hate winter. But I can't wait because it means nonstop training the horse. 

He's coming back really well!

So, I've realized that I ride worse in front of the mirror because it encourages me to give away the contact, so I've been using the pivo out in the dressage court. And if I put it in the place it needs to be in for me to do remote lessons, it tracks me perfectly if I'm alone! I've reached out to the company via that Facebook group to see if they can make some changes to pivo meet so it's more usable for lessons. Namely, that the instructor needs to be able to take control of the remote without the rider having to okay it every time. Also it'd be nice to have the instructor be able to click on which horse to follow. The former would be ideal though! 

With the pivo, I can see how TC is improving every ride. And I've convinced myself that that's all I want to see, just that he gets better every ride. 

On Saturday, we started some canter work. He was happy to do it and felt forward and into my hand. I'm not asking for any collection, obviously, but I was pretty happy with how under himself he felt. Those equibands are a life changer. Even without spurs, I feel like I can get him more engaged than I ever have before. When he's up to a full ride in them, I'll start to take days off from them to work on movements (I don't think it's fair to ask for things like flying changes in them, that'd be weird). My goal is to put them on twice a week for our basics-heavy rides and then reap the benefits on the other days when I can put my spurs on and work him. Right now everything is a basics-heavy ride. 

Cantering! yay

I was going to take him out to show this fall but I think I want to invest that money in lessons. Being out of lessons and not in work has made us rusty and I'd like to not put worse scores on our record just for the sake of showing. So our first show is scheduled to be in January 2021, we'll snag our All Breeds scores and qualify for regionals in the winter/spring and then maybe go out at 4-1 early-ish in the year too just to get him to be my Fourth level horse! 

So for the winter, it's just the basics. 

We are just following Tanya's instructions. Do not put the horse on straight lines, do lots of lateral work, don't give away the contact until I can push his nose out with reins that feel like metal rods. And it's going well so far. 

The canter feels better than the trot, which is how it has been all year. I mean, I'm glad his canter is better than his trot because for a long time his canter was absolute garbage. From now until we start really needing his piaffe and passage in the show ring (so like, a good few years), all the new movements are canter movements. 

Glad to see his hind end looking like that in the
working gaits!

The trot to the left feels great, he's very rideable and goes to the contact pretty well even right at the beginning. The trot to the right is a little questionable. It honestly feels okay but it's very apparent that he isn't really wrapping himself around my inside leg and dropping his inside hip. That's normal this way for him. It's just the harder side. 

To fix it, we did a ton of shoulder-in to the right (and honestly to the left, he's basically going to live in shoulder-in for a while) and really focused on getting him to stretch to the outside rein a bit more. That made a big difference! So we'll be doing a ton of that work to help him get stronger. 

The best horse

Generally being able to ride again (and breathe outdoors again) has been really amazing for my mental health. Things have been a bit rough at times (obviously, it's 2020) and not being able to ride made every little thing that went wrong feel much worse. 

I'm glad TC is coming back strong and I'm excited to have the winter to bring him back before our first show, hopefully in January! 

The Price of Being Public

I had a few incidences last week with people kind of going at me on instagram, both directly and indirectly. I had a private instagram for a long time after one of my Mary posts made someone feel directly attacked and then she approached me in person and got really defensive and I got spooked.  

Then I swapped my instagram to my business instagram name and figured I'd make it public again. If people didn't like it, who cares, right? Same thing with this blog. Not everyone is going to like me. I don't like everyone. 

I gained a lot of followers after posting about the L program and doing quizzes. I loved that! For the most part, both this blog and IG have been so much fun to connect with people on. 

Plus I've loved sharing this guy's journey, he loves
to show so much!

But by putting yourself out there in public, there are people who think that it's okay to call you out about shit. For one reason or another. 

I have a couple rules about how I do social media. In the past, maybe I didn't abide by those rules, but especially in the last year I've cracked down on myself quite a lot. First, I try to look at everything through a positive light, rather than a negative one. It's really easy to see someone's name come up and immediately start looking for what's wrong. After the judging program especially, I've started to try really hard to see all the positive. It's helpful for judging because negative things are SO easy to see but you can't just give everyone 0s. 

Second, I will never ever message someone about what they're doing to lecture them or give them unsolicited advice. Messages are always positive. If you're not paying me, you don't get any advice. Unless you're my friend and you ask though, I give away advice to friends who ask. 

It helps me because on the positive side, if people want my advice, they can pay me for it and it allows me to recognize that after all these years, my advice is worth something so I'm not giving it away for free. On the other side, it allows me to root for people who I don't necessarily agree with in every way. I can say to myself "I will not ride TC in draw reins" but I can smile when others who do ride their horses in draw reins get a blue ribbon or move up a level. Essentially, unless I'm being paid, I turn my trainer eyes off. Those cost money to turn on! 

Y'all were also around when I got my Gold medal
and learned how to ride half pass properly

However, not everyone abides by these rules and that's fine. I guess. Just don't expect me to respond well if it's directed at me. 

For the most part, I feel fairly immune. I am a USDF Gold Medalist, have gone through the L program, am lucky to work with some pretty amazing trainers, and I feel like I communicate fairly clearly (maybe not, who knows honestly). I don't do anything too weird, I score well, and I obviously curate the images and video that I show. I talked a lot about the issues TC was having, but I didn't post a bunch of pictures or videos that anyone could use as ammunition. 

But even posting a video of TC's shoulders while I was walking with my frontline on vs off led to someone messaging me to tell me that TC's saddle was obviously fitting poorly and that his right shoulder was dropped. This was a stranger and I basically just made fun of her. Tell me stupid shit and get stupid shit right back. I essentially handled it by telling her how flattered I was that she would take time out of her day to give me a hard time about my horse. She dissolved into spewing some All Lives Matter bullshit at me and I just laughed until she blocked me. 

Thanks but it's not

I just thanked her for making me feel
like a real live influencer

I then told her how to pause stories

That doesn't hurt. Random strangers telling me I'm wrong or hurting my horse or riding poorly or that my saddle doesn't fit (it had been recently fit lol) is fine. I have plenty of evidence to the contrary, I have scores and I have trainers and I have vets, saddle fitters, chiropractors, etc saying we're fine. 

At the end of last week though, I had a friend do it to me. And not directly. She took a screenshot of what I shared on IG in my stories about Tanya and my discussion about TC sometimes going BTV in his warm up (by his choice, see my previous post) and how that's okay (not permanently, see previous post again). She then shared it to a group on Facebook and used it to start a discussion. Kind of a dick move, like, why not just say "I hear some people saying that BTV is fine in warm up and I disagree, what do you think?" but to literally take my post as an example?

But that wasn't honestly what bothered me. I mean, put it in your own words but whatever. What bothered me was all her replies to comments, giving information about me and about TC, saying that she'd taught me before (once, at the barn TC hated so he wasn't himself, and never again because it didn't go well), saying that she was so sad I wasn't forcing TC to bring his poll to the highest point at all times, bummed that I'd gone down "that pathway" with him and she was very disappointed in me (by the way, she has said NONE of this to my face). Just earlier in the day we had been texting about one of my clients coming to try a horse she had for sale. We'd chatted about one of her horses for a bit. I had her on my webinars. She's been a pretty good friend for a couple years now.

I love my horse and you can see he is clearly very
sad that I've taken him down this pathway

So there's my line, I guess. My line is that, if you say you're my friend and you act like my friend, don't screenshot my shit and put it on a discussion forum so people will bash me, then agree with them and give them information about me. Just don't. Or at least if you're going to, don't pretend to be my friend. I screenshotted it and posted it on IG right back. I also wrote that I was sad. And I was, mostly, but I was also mad. She and I talked it out a little bit over messenger but it was clear the betrayal wasn't going to go away right away. So I've done some things to limit her exposure to my posts. 

Because honestly, even if you think I'm doing a shit job training TC (and that's fine, keep it to yourself and stop hate-following me, maybe talk to a therapist about why you subject yourself to this kind of thing), it'd be hard to argue that I'm the worst person out there. 

The horse whinnies at me and comes up to me every day, he squeals through his work, he adores showing, I just paid for a huge amount of ulcerguard because he seemed iffy, I take him out on the trail and to fun bombproofing clinics, he's not worked in draw reins so tight his nose bonks his chest, his noseband is loose, he's not put in a double bridle at all despite it being allowed now... And the morning of this incident, the air quality took a turn for the worse and I nebulized him and rode him around bareback. He hasn't been asked to work for real since August 18th when the air got bad. I gave up all breeds for him, because why wouldn't I?

The best thing I've done is convinced this horse to
love me despite all the 20m circles I kept him on

So, I feel like even if you think I'm going about training the wrong way, you can't argue I don't do what I think is best for my horse. And that's where my thought process has changed on all this. I may follow people I don't agree with, but I don't follow anyone who I don't think is doing their best for their horses.

And that's where we can draw the line at universal truths: don't beat your horses, don't starve your horses, don't put your horses in danger, don't ride your horse in bad air. And we can have fuzzier lines for theoretical differences: I don't put horses in double bridles until they've "earned it" at Third level, I don't think horses need "come to Jesus" moments as much as riders do, I think biomechanics are key to being a secure and effective rider. 

But none of those theoretical differences make me think badly of people who don't agree with me. I don't think that people who put their First level horses in doubles are ruining their horses, or people who think Mary Wanless is running a cult and I'm part of it are idiots. We are all on our own journey and as long as your horse is happy and healthy and you are doing your damn best like the rest of us, good for you and know that I'm rooting for you. 

His face is hilarious

So, it was a major bummer to find out this way that this was how one of my friends thought about me. I've made it clear that I don't feel that's okay. I've put her on restriction on IG so she can't see my stories so I can share stuff about TC without feeling worried that it might come back to bite me. And I'll just keep doing my thing with my awesome but very challenging creature and hopefully our successes will speak for themselves. 

2020 Q3 Goals Review and Q4 Goals

 Another quarter of the worst year of all of our lives, fabulous. So, without further ado, let's look back on the Q3 goals. 

Q3 Goals:

TC
- stay sane and sound

so far so good on this front

- work on lengthening TC's neck, especially in the collected paces and lateral work off the right leg

well, this was getting better except now we can't ride

- continue to solidify the changes

same as above, they were definitely more solid, of the eight changes we've done in the show ring, only one was iffy

- work to get the canter half pass more upright

again, it was getting pretty decent until the fires

- work on the piaffe undersaddle

worked on it until it seemed like it wasn't helping his throughness

- continue improving the collected paces

definitely way better

- finish up our Third level scores for All Breeds

nope, I'm pretty sad about this

The highlight of the quarter was this show

My Riding
- be more comfortable riding in a flexion pattern

I'm probably too comfortable now, I feel very round backed right now

- continue working on getting my upper inner thigh more plugged in

honestly I haven't ridden enough lately to even remember how that is going

Teaching
- get everyone on a more regular schedule

hah, I really want to but it's tough

- work on being better about billing clients (insist on remote payment for some if necessary)

I've definitely been better about this!

- teach at least 2 new riders

I think I taught like 4-6 this quarter surprisingly! 

Love his tail!

Msc
- work toward getting on a better workout schedule

we were doing a good job until this last week! 

- get out in the wilderness more

this is now not happening as much because of the fires ugh

- continue meal planning/trying to eat better

we've been much better at this! We are using an app called Mealime and it's amazing

- maybe go back to PT for my SI joint?

not yet, COVID is still pretty shit around here

Our new normal unfortunately

Q4 Goals:

TC

- stay sane and sound

- recover from the smoke and come back into work nicely

- revisit all the Third level stuff

- start looking at the pirouette canter for real

- improve the connection 

- improve my ability to ride him outside of lessons 

My Riding

- take more lessons, somehow

- feel more confident about TC's connection

- work on my biomechanics in general

- work to get fitter so the sitting trot isn't such a drag

Such a good pony

Teaching

- honestly I just want to keep teaching my current people 

- more would be nice but, you know

Msc

- maybe buy a house?? 

- continue on the meal plan train

- continue on the gym train too

- go snowboarding hopefully! 

- continue to survive the pandemic

He is so funny

Ugh I'm super over 2020. Today the air went back to being shit, so I'm feeling extra over it all!