Unwinding Ridden Work

As I mentioned yesterday, I bought a saddle and rode TC in it! Actually, I've ridden him in it twice now and I'm genuinely looking forward to riding him in it today. 

I was glad that on the first day, I was able to grab some video. And I was also grateful to be able to send those videos to Kate and get her opinion on them. It's really hard to see my own horse with fresh eyes and I am really struggling with looking at this situation objectively. It's been a mix of emotions where I feel really horrible that we got to this place, and really frustrated (both with me and with him a little), and because of that, I can't really break things down as easily just watching the video by myself.

I have no horse photos but I took a day off on
Tuesday to both go birding by the coast and to go
to TC's breeder's Celebration of Life

The few things I noticed were:

- We are both really defensive of each other, it's like I'm preparing for him to balk and he's preparing for me to stuff him forward. I look very hesitant in my riding, but in the same way you're hesitant when you're super frustrated but trying to remain calm. Like there's a hardness living inside of my hesitation. 

- He's not letting me in, I feel like I'm sitting outside of him and if I try to sit into him at all, he gives me a warning about balking. I described it as when I'm helping someone write code who doesn't have a basic understanding of the language, so I'm like, half asking them to write it and half literally spelling it out for them. And then I see what they've written and I'm like... I mean technically that will run but that's... just weird. 

Kate saw all of that as well, but also pointed out a mechanic he's fallen into with his hind end, where his right hind sweeps under his body but not in a carrying way, it stiffens straight and then his left hind kind of pole vaults over it. That was a really huge realization and I think will change things for us. But I've got to give it more thought and try to feel it a bit better before I write about it. 

His breeder was quite the character,
I will really miss her, I've had a few
losses recently and while this one
was not completely unexpected, it was
still a loss of a very influential person
in my (and TC's) life <3

There were good things too - for the most part, he had a pretty pleasant expression on his face! He looks sound and happy enough to do his work. And he hasn't been bolting or balking much. 

And while I've got some weird stuff going on in my pelvis, I still maintained quite a good mechanic! It's funny, I think the pelvis thing is the fact that I rehabbed my hip injury all this year. I feel great, I did physical therapy and now I work with a personal trainer who helped me come up with a very effective program that has allowed me to avoid surgery! But now my hips are quite a lot looser. Stronger yes, but much looser. And I think a lot of my riding mechanic depended on my hips being a little tight. So now there's this slightly odd twisty thing I'm doing with my hips in my posting mechanic. 

I see my trainer for a private session (I normally do groups with my gym buddies since it's more affordable and more fun that way!) soon, so I need to really take inventory of what is going on so that we can talk about it and get me a bit better stabilized for riding. But it's progress! Even if I'm a bit wonky right now, my hip hasn't hurt at all while riding and I'm really not as unfit as I thought I'd be.

It was a nice day to just wander along the coast
with friends and family, and then go celebrate her

On the second day, armed with some of Kate's exercises (who I am very thankful for, since I seem incapable of doing any critical thinking about the horse right now), I decided that I wanted to try to improve the connection. This is the purpose of me riding him - because I have more influence over it, so if I can't get him well connected, we may as well go back to long lining. 

Back in the day, this horse had the dreamiest connection, he was tough to get there, but once there it was like I could draw him into the work I wanted him to do. We lost that along the way, and I think I'd really like to get him back to that place. Especially since showing is not really a huge goal of mine (like obviously I will show him a little if he comes back since he loves it, but it's not the primary driver), so we can take things slow and we don't have to stick within the confines of a test. I do think that's what happened, slowly but surely he had to do a thing NOW and my trainers were in my ears making that very clear. I don't think that's bad, I just think that it caused a loss of trust. But now I get to do it my way!

Meanwhile Christmas exploded at my
workplace and I sat next to this festive
pillow the next morning for breakfast

The first half of the ride was me battling with the frustration of his warm up - he just takes longer these days and I'm trying to figure out what the right balance is between hustling him a little bit forward during it, and leaving him completely alone (which feels like reinforcing him being behind my leg). I do think it's probably better if I longe him through it, but I've been skipping that because I'm greedy and want to ride. 

Side bar- this reminds me of a client I had whose horse would take exactly twenty minutes to warm up, regardless of what you did. When I rode her, I'd get up in my half seat and just do trot sets, then she'd be ready to work. But my client would come to me each week with a new theory that if she just does X exercise (which took her twenty minutes to discover) it worked super well. Then she'd start with that exercise and wouldn't you know it, the horse wouldn't immediately warm up and the client would be frustrated. 

Then, the middle part of the ride was me fighting the urge to just put him on the damn bit. He was floating above and away from me and would give me his nose, tucked nicely like the little faker his friesian breeding encourages him to be, but I had zero access to his back or the base of his neck. I resorted to pulling on the face since that's a tried and true method (that doesn't work but it FEELS like it works. It's like using an AI assistant at work, feels like progress but at the end of the day, it just produces spaghetti code that sure, you've tested a lot, but still doesn't work - lots of work metaphors today). During this part, I was working on some shallow loops, and we were absolutely all over the place. 

And then finally I took a moment to use my brain (very hard right now) and decided to go back to something Tracey used to make me do - hold onto the tab on my saddle pad to give me an idea of how steady my hands are (or are not). I did it enough when TC was younger that it kind of puts us both in a better place. And I'm also so unbelievably out of riding shape and practice that the moment I did it, it made me realize how loose in the tack I had gotten over time, and with this new flexi-hip. 

We also had our year-end social and
they had this random candy bar

Slowly, over the course of a few trot sets, he started to really come onto the bit properly, not just faking it, but I could feel and see in his neck/back that he was much better connected. And I finally got that same feeling I'd had years and years ago, that I could just draw him through the exercises. We rode our shallow loops without them feeling so drunk, and I could feel him start to tune in like "oh this is interesting" for the first time at the very least since last winter, if not longer. And, when we went back to the barn, he had a little hypertrophy in his trapezius (both cervical, and I could convince myself thoracic too), which has only really happened on trail rides so far. 

I kind of couldn't believe it? Our second ride back and by the end of it, we got to a place where I'd be super happy to stay indefinitely? 

Anyway, we have a LONG way to go, this could have just been a fluke, we could still see the same pattern happen next summer where he begins to feel terrible again, I could just be making this up as I careen into the end of the year after a really stressful half... but I'm relishing in the fact that this is the first time I'm genuinely looking forward to riding my horse in quite a long time.