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!