Slow is Smooth and Smooth is Fast

For the last week and a half, I've been putting into play what we worked on at the clinic I finally managed to post about this week. 

Unfortunately it rained the night of the clinic so TC got locked onto his paddock to preserve his pasture AND the arena flooded with water. Luckily he got his pasture back on Wednesday, but the arena wasn't useable for real until Friday. We did a lot of work on the road and we also did some work splashing through the arena, but Friday was the first day I could feel the difference in him since the clinic. 

I think I have my horse back

The long term plan is to bring him slowly through the levels of dressage again. We are starting at Introductory and I've been told it will be a solid year before we are "back" to where we were. Meaning it will be until Fall 2022 before he is strong enough to school Third level. Good thing his changes are so solid! How he managed to do that with how he was muscled... well, we won't get into that. He is a very generous horse and that alone makes me so unbelievably hopeful for the future. 

Anyway, our protocol for a bit is to stick to the walk and trot to let his psoas continue to get better. He has some disfunction there from faulty patterns in the canter. In addition, with his right hind being so weak, we need to work on strengthening that before we canter or his canter is going to just make things worse. He can and does canter around in his pasture (I am so glad he has so much room because I'd feel bad if he was stuck inside while also not being allowed to canter under saddle), but I'm not going to encourage it under saddle. 

We have our exercises at walk and trot to help him find his "leads" which is just basically his lateral balance. He tends to corkscrew to the inside, especially to the right, so we are helping him understand how to keep himself more upright. We do a lot of changing of directions at the walk to help him strengthen his pectorals so that he can better hold himself upright in each direction. I haven't progressed to changing directions at the trot just yet. 

There is so much power when he feels good, it's
not as balanced as I'd like, but I'm not going to tell
him not to experiment with his body right now

In the walk to trot transition, my focus has been primarily to keep his underneck from firing. He has always had that tendency in upward transitions and now I have a lot more understanding on how to fix it and why it's a huge deal. He is doing the same thing in the halt to walk, and he's a bit more frustrated in that transition, so we are doing a lot of those too with lots of clicks and treats. 

The trot to walk transition is shockingly balanced now that he's actually able to lift the base of his neck. He has always felt so unbalanced in the downward transitions! I cannot wait to ride his first canter to walk transition eventually. 

At the trot, we are mostly just staying on large figures. I wish the arena at the ranch was a tich bigger since he does seem to feel most comfortable in larger spaces and on larger circles. I think we'll be heading over to Kate's barn a bit this winter (certainly for his first few days of cantering!), so hopefully that will help. But at the end of the day, we are at the ranch until we are not, and I think if TC could choose, he'd pick his pasture over a larger arena. There could be some significant changes in my life that moves him closer to my house, but for now, I'm able to keep him at the ranch, so I will. 

He's feeling so good

I'm trying to set out clear goals for what I want to have happen before we move on to Training level. My primary goal right now is to get his right hind under my right seat bone all the time. Because this is tough for him, our better side at the moment is tracking right! That's a welcome change. Ever since she got us more laterally balanced, I haven't had an issue that direction, which has been our tough way for a long time. 

The right hind is hit or miss tracking left. We are doing a lot of walk work to help me show him the aid for alignment and to practice staying in alignment for longer. Then at the trot, we are doing shorter bursts of trot where I keep him aligned for as long as I can and then walk him before he falters. Slow and steady. 

Struggling with alignment to the left but he's still
feeling quite good!

Since the clinic, his body is just looking so much better. His neck is on the right way again. The dip in front of his withers seems to be less aggressive. His back is looking better. His chest is wide and his shoulders are better defined. His abs actually seem to exist. It's only been a couple of weeks but I've also been working on this stuff since late September. 

I'm so eager and feel so impatient, almost like what I felt when he was younger. I can just feel the passage living in his baby working trot now. I can feel the half pass, shoulder-in, haunches-in, walk pirouette right there if I just... but rushing him will immediately take things downhill. He doesn't have the muscle to do these things right now, he's never really had the muscle to do them correctly. And he's such a good good boy, he'll do them for me if I ask, but he'll do them using the wrong muscles. 

So much clicker training right now

My rule is that everything has to feel as easy as tracking right does before we move on. Until his left matches his right, we do not canter, we do not do lateral work, we do not do walk pirouettes. Once he matches, that means his right hind is strong enough to start thinking about more things. 

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. That's going to be my mantra for the next year.