I Need a Seatbelt

I had what I think is probably the best ride of my life the other day on TC and it makes me so excited for the future. 

We started with our normal abduction exercises. He is still kind of struggling with his spinal integrity while tracking left, especially in the walk and early in the trot work. Getting him to put a leg at each corner and letting him warm up like that has been super helpful to keeping him in that state of spinal integrity for the rest of the ride. 

In our warm up, we stay in a little bit of a stretching, relaxed frame. I want to really make sure that he’s moving properly, reaching for contact, and is lifting through his core and pectorals. 

Really, TC?

There's so much sitting here, I'm so impressed

From there, I started our rein back exercise, where we take this correct posture and ask him to shift his weight back, then we hold that weight shift as much as possible into the walk from the rein back, then eventually the trot from the rein back, and the canter. 

It’d been a while since I’d done it because he had regressed a little with his balking a week or two ago. I thought that maybe asking for that much collection had sent us backwards. He needs to learn how to do everything from the correct posture and this is proving to be challenging for me as I am so used to feeling him in his incorrect posture. 

But he came out raring to go and ready to sit right down and do his work with that exercise. We had no balking incidents at all! 

If my body language makes you think I'm afraid of
him, that's true

Dude

I've never felt gaits like this out of him. His walk is like a wild cat's prowl, his trot is incredibly elevated in front, and his canter... wow. I had no idea these gaits were in there. He's always been a fairly correct mover and certainly a big mover, but he hasn't had too much of a wow factor. He primarily scores 7 on gaits and I saw that dip in 2020 where he was scoring more like 6.5. These gaits are more like what I'd expect to score in the 8 to 9 range. If I don't shut them down. 

That was a massive challenge that I mostly failed at in this ride. He feels incredible like this but it is completely unnerving. I had to keep talking to myself and to him the entire ride to get myself to let go and let him move. I feel bad that he's feeling so amazing and I'm up there like "that's great you're feeling good! Now take it down several hundred notches so I can ride it" so I need to get my shit together. 

There is so much more to do before these gaits become his norm. I obviously need to grow a pair and ride the horse forward and push my hands at him more often than not. He needs to gain strength and confidence in his body. All of that is going to take time. 

So much lift through his shoulder, damn

Who even is this horse?

What I loved the most about this ride was the amount of pure joy that both TC and I were feeling. He was so ecstatic to do his work and eagerly said YES I WILL whenever I asked him to do something else. I always carry a whip and I'll use it as an extension of my leg if I need to ask him to move his haunches over behind his shoulders, but once he was in this state of mind, I could have dropped it. I've ditched the spurs, on a horse who was broke to ride and then the next day ridden in spurs because he was so dead to the aids. I've never felt him like this. 

To be able to get gaits like those out of a horse without putting a ton of pressure on him, without chasing him into my hand or doing a ton of transitions to get him sharp off my aids, without spurs or a flash noseband. To basically just show him how he could use his body in a way that feels good to him and then... get out of his way and let him. I dunno, it was pretty freaking magical.

I'm so excited

He's a totally different horse

It really makes me think though... how many horses are actually spectacular movers but we don't know it because their shoulders are so messed up? If we could take the time to build up their thoracic slings for real (and I'll talk about that more later too since I think we get told that certain movements/pieces of equipment/training techniques work in a certain way when they don't), would we need to buy such freakishly talented horses for dressage? Or could we take a five thousand dollar friesian cross out of a pasture and just release his shoulders and build the proper muscle and get ourselves a crazy good mover?

Definitely makes me think about my next horse... I had a nice long list in mind for what I wanted because while I want this next horse to be a nice all around horse, I really want something I can still do the upper levels of dressage on just in case (in case the horse is injured and can only do dressage or if either of us don't want to jump). But now I'm kind of thinking that with the right training and bodywork, pretty much any horse with three okay gaits can be a spectacular mover. Or at least, good enough for the mid to upper levels of dressage. 

I try not to dwell though. At the end of the day, I'm so unbelievably excited about MY horse who is doing such great work right now. I can't wait for these to be his gaits all the time!