Responsive

TC was really great in our last lesson! And it was such a good lesson. We'd been schooling a bunch of the Second and Third level things from our past and I was pretty pleased by how he was feeling in the half passes, and I had started really drilling the half steps and the canter to walk transitions. 

But coming to Kate with those things felt very... this lesson with Tracey in 2013. Wow, blast from the past rereading that. I think I might have glossed over this part in that post, but I vividly remember going into that lesson talking a big game about how we were schooling X and Y and really needed to work on Z in order to move up to Prix St George. And then she brought us back to the basics. 

Looking good! My left hand remains like this,
but that's fine, we'll work on it

Pivo doesn't record very well during lessons oh well

Thirteen years later, I've learned my lesson. Because when Kate and I talked about what to work on in this lesson, I mentioned two things:

1. I think TC waits until I'm about to get after him for not responding to my leg... to respond to my leg. So he's late off the aid and even if I do a bunch of transitions, he seems to know when I'm about to swat him. 

2. He reins back SO SLOWLY oh my god, he inches backwards like a snail. 

Neither of those things are hugely problematic, they don't feel all that related to the half pass or the canter to walk necessarily, but responsiveness is a huge issue with this horse that I want to address. I'm not looking to go back to where we were before, with him feeling kinda blah and me having to like, drag him through movements. 

Trail rides have been fun lately

Sure enough, the exercises we did got him so responsive and easy to ride that clearly the movements I was struggling with were not going to be the issue! 

We changed how I was asking for things first. I rode on a square with quarter turns on the forehand at each corner and I was to ask him for the turn first with my seat, which I had not been doing. Do less with my leg, so then when my leg does come on, he's had ample time to at the very least prepare to do the movement. Then I was to ride a full 360 degree turn if I didn't get the response that I wanted, steadily adding a bit of pressure with my whip (light taps getting harder) until he was really moving around. Then go back to the quarter turns. 

The same type of increasing aid in my transitions to trot, ask with my seat first, then slowly close the leg, then slowly adding harder and harder taps until he was really moving, then settle into a trot that was more appropriate. This made a huge difference for me, because I get pretty emotional about any sort of blah feeling moving forward because of our past, and having to really smack him for it is a no-go for me mentally. But by the time I've gotten to a true "smack" with the whip, he's had so much time to get his butt moving that it's like brother, you could have avoided this. And we really didn't have to get to anything close to that. It was like he thought I could increase forever and he was like oh shit she just doesn't stop, I gotta go. 

We both appreciate the shade though

As we were doing these walk to trot transitions, we inevitably had to do trot to walk transitions, and I got called out on those pretty immediately. I let him die in those transitions. I really didn't think I did, because he stays pretty well up to my hand and stays nicely under himself, but what he does is he kind of braces against the back edge of my aid. So sure physically he's right there, but my aid is doing a lot of the heavy lifting to keep him there, vs him being more in self carriage and on my seat. 

So we explored slowing down very slowly, verrry slowly asking his trot to get smaller and smaller until he was in walk, and sometimes pushing him out of it. Which I thought I was already doing pretty well, but I needed to be even pickier about it. There's a slight pushing back he does when he's like, quietly dislodging from my seat to predict that we're going to walk, and since I'm actively asking for walk, that just feels like obedience, but it's not! 

This girl has been okay, had a bad
reaction to her chemo pill but is
recovering

After working on those transitions, we did some reining back work. The idea was the same, take about four seconds to go from zero aid to the perfect rein back aid, then slowly tap on his shoulder, increasing slowly and steadily with taps until he is reining back in the way I want him to. And then we took it a step further and went into second gear reining back (even faster) so that I knew I had it. 

He was so funny, at one point I started to set up for the reinback and he got himself so balanced that he decided to offer a jambette, silly boy. We talked a little bit about his posture - he tends to curl a little in the rein back and we do want to fix that. But I'm focusing a lot on the responsiveness, which does depend on the balance, don't get me wrong, but I figured that I'd address the curling once we got the responsiveness down a few days in a row. 

Having a pet with cancer is brutal,
but with complications it's even worse

We did a bit of trot after this and he was QUITE forward, it was so much fun. He was almost... too forward. He kinda left a few times, not in a bolt, but definitely too far out in front of me. And that's when we started talking about how, he's kind of like a stereotypical mediocre white man in corporate america. 

He kind of thinks my ideas are not worth acting on, except then he'll take my ideas (e.g. being forward) and propose them at another time and I'm supposed to just go along with it because I guess I did want him to do that. 

He's annoyed when I'm late (e.g. I get left behind when he zips off) but when he's late (e.g. to my aid), I'm rude for pointing it out.

He complains endlessly about having to do his job (e.g. being slow into the arena, trying to get us to turn to the trails instead of the arena) and then still expects a promotion (e.g. cookies, I frequently have to say "you haven't DONE anything").

And maybe he's a bit red-pilled, because he thinks that I should stop trying to "lead" and let him "lead" but he's a terrible leader because all he wants to do is stand in the shade and ask for me to give him cookies. 

Anyway, my homework is to start bullying him a little more like I already bully (in a professional way) the men at my job. My ideas are good, we should act on them now, we will both be on time, you are to follow my lead on things where I am the subject matter expert (he doesn't know nearly as much about dressage as I do). 

Excuse me, I haven't once said the
word synergy

We touched on the canter and it was a bit more of the same kind of thing, keep him on my seat. And then we had a bit of time left and I asked Kate about how TC likes to fall out to the right when tracking left. It's super manageable, way better than it was before, but again it's like he's leaning on my aid. From the outside he looks straight, but I have to work to keep him there. Better than him flying through the aid, but not good enough. 

She had me imagine that there was a squishy piece of foam between my right rein and his neck, and that by pressing my rein into it (so not actually touching his neck), I could push him around on a 15 meter circle. If he didn't turn, I was to do the increasing taps on his right shoulder, and also focus on drawing him in with my inside rein to show him that there was room there. We alternated between circles and then riding down the long side, and it felt WAY better. He was much easier to steer and I didn't feel like I had to do so much management!

I had to screenshot this because it's applicable even
to this silly sport

It was such a great lesson and then I immediately went out of state! But my rider (who also rides with Kate) rode TC twice over the weekend and she does such a nice job with him. I can't wait to get back on and ride him and work on this stuff! 

Also, so cute, I didn't get pictures, but I let Rico out in TC's paddock when I was riding TC and he rolled in TC's sand pile (but not his? ugh) and then sniffed around the whole paddock. So I think I'm going to do that more often! TC was beside himself but too bad, so sad, Rico gets whatever he wants. 

Planning Arena Upgrades

I'm constantly thinking about my arena. My current arena at the ranch is about 15 years old. When it was built, we didn't really know what it'd be used for, but within a year or two after it was built, I was developing a Grand Prix horse in it. Then it sat for a number of years before I brought TC to the ranch and started riding in it for real again.

I've been back and forth whether to keep TC and my future horses at the ranch long term, but I think I've made the decision that he's there to stay for good, even if I daydream for boarding facilities where the arenas are big and rectangular and have square corners and are watered and dragged by someone else. I could see boarding a future horse out for a while, but I do think that it wouldn't be a bad idea to sink a little effort into updating the ranch arena. 

More tractor work at home than at a boarding
facility, but at least it's fun!

My first task was to square off the arena as much as possible. It's kind of a wonky shape and as much as having a larger space would be great, having a predictable shape is honestly better for me. So I've been dragging it rectangular for a while, which is actually so convenient because it means I have a good spot for my Pivo, mounting block, to store my roller, and to have all my cavallettis. I've dragged it like this for months and I think am at the point where I'd be willing to move the fence in. 

The benefit of moving the fence in isn't just so that I have a rail on that one side to use. It also means that I can move the sprinklers over, get another sprinkler to have a better sprinkle pattern, drop the pipes under the ground so that they don't grow moss and make the sprinklers shitty, and I can also drop posts in locations where it'd be convenient to have them, such as at the quarter lines and where I could maybe set up letters for at least a short court. 

It's like the least rectangular thing, but you
can see where I could square it off

So that's the plan for this fall I think. My dad is confident that we can do it ourselves, which makes me nervous because I think he's where I get a lot of my "how hard could it really be" energy from. But my brother likes manual labor and I think he has some friends who could help too. 

I think I'll want to structure the existing weird corner as a storage area, put a gate there to easily bring the roller in, put in some pole storage so that I can bring jumps in and out, and I'll also have to figure out how my mounting block is going to work there too. 

We also get to redo my fencing, which has slowly been falling apart over the years. And I really want to figure out my Pivo situation. Like I'd LOVE to have a little dedicated Pivo spot where I can just bring the Pivo out on a small tripod or in a bag rather than on the giant tripod I have. 

Plus, in a perfect world, I'd love a speaker system where I can send music through bluetooth and be able to listen to music in my arena without using my headphones or playing it from my phone in my pocket. That feels like luxury and honestly may not be a thing. 

The now repaired corner

Once that gets all situated (hopefully this fall), I think the next big upgrade for the arena (next spring maybe) is going to be the footing and laser leveling the base. The arena slopes 2% diagonally toward the gate, which is why that spot suffered so much after years of storms. I repaired the base there and have felt comfortable riding in that corner, and now that we roll the arena during major storms, the water has been much easier to deal with. But it's still a 2% grade which is so much for an arena. 

The footing is also 15 years old, and while I have added sand here and there, it's got a lot of dust in it and so it sticks to my harrow and the footing isn't as good quality as it used to be. TC doesn't seem to mind, but if I'm going to be riding there for years to come, jumping on it again, maybe leasing something for the kids? I want better footing. Or at least sand with no dirt in it!

So I'm hoping to get a quote on what it'd take to scrape the existing footing, dump it onto my tracks, redo the base so that the repair is actually done properly, grate it so that it's crowned, or at least so that it's not a diagonal grade, and then add new footing and laser level it. 

He does love the ranch, and he loves
walking down the road to visit his
many animal friends

Hopefully I can make that happen next year! But honestly even just having a more consistent sprinkler situation inside an actually rectangular arena will be amazing. 

Becoming an Amateur - Part 1

I started my horse trainer journey when I was fifteen years old. Our neighbor's granddaughter wanted to learn to ride and I was cheap and nearby. I charged $10 a lesson and I thought that was quite good because it was above the minimum wage. Kind of insane that it is still above the federal minimum wage, but I digress. 

Her mom would pick me up because I couldn't drive yet and my mom thought that was great because she could just stay home and I'd teach my student and ride my horse and probably end up cleaning paddocks before she'd come get me in the evening. 

My lessons were objectively not good, but I LOVED teaching so much. I loved riding more, but teaching was so much fun because I loved watching my riders progress, I loved the aha moment when they understood a new concept (or an old concept), and I loved trying to figure out how to help a tricky horse. 

Shoutout to my friends for getting this
made for me, I still have it!

Young trainer Megan
reading a test for a client
after being assured
earlier that the client
knew the test lol

I loved it so much that when I graduated from high school, I was like right, I'd like to do this for work. And my parents said no and I got sent to college instead. Since that's what you did in the early 2000s, you went to college.

Four years later I was still quite far away from a degree and completely out of the college fund that had been put aside for me. But I had grown my business and so I dropped out, moved into a cheap apartment, and took a part time job as an eventing trainer's assistant to have a more steady income outside of working with my own clients. 

A few years later, and it's in the early stages of this blog, I realized that I wanted more stability in my life (aka health insurance after I had several accidents leading up to a mild concussion that I had to ride with the day after) and so I did go back to school. I continued teaching full time in my undergrad, and then backed off to 20-30 hours a week while in graduate school. But my intention was not to quit teaching.

There were signs though

Girl you take so many days off now

So I didn't! I continued teaching while also working at my academia job until we were about a year into the pandemic. And that's when it all really came to a head. I learned SO much during the pandemic, and the main thing was this: if I live my life in a way that is right on the edge of what I can handle stress-wise, things like the pandemic, which I have no control over, are incredibly debilitating. And it's stressful to work two jobs! 

And so in 2021, I ended up taking 3 months medical leave from the college I was working at so that I could recover from intense burnout and do something I never thought I would - set myself up to stop teaching. 

I shut down my business in August of 2021, after I had my two last students achieve two big achievements - one got their USDF Silver Medal on a horse we'd trained together since the horse was 4 years old, the other achieved their C3 Dressage and HB pony club ratings less than two years after learning her diagonals with me. And then I walked away from teaching, outside of teaching a few remote lessons here and there for about a year or two afterward. 

I achieved so much myself as a pro that I think would
have been much harder to achieve as an amateur

My goal was to go into tech because I had decided, after my brother had his first kid here, that I wanted to stay in the bay area. And it's quite difficult to live here just working one job without that job being in tech. Long term, I wanted to be a data engineer at a well known tech company. I loved everything I was learning about data engineering and at the time, the bigger companies seemed much more stable (LOL not as much anymore, but it's fine). 

But I had no tech experience and was not a data engineer in my current role. So I prioritized finding a company that would not stress me out (too much) and a job that I could do with my current skills, bonus points if it seemed like I could transition to DE inside that company. 

I found just that, after months of interviewing and turning down offers when it just didn't feel right, in February of 2022. The job was easy, the company was large and stable, and there was a lot of growth potential for me in my career there. In September of that same year, I left my ex who had been supporting me through this transition and I was struggling more than I had ever been training horses. I thought briefly about teaching again, but instead, I poured myself into my work and got promoted six months later. 

Rode a lot of really cool horses too

All while this is going on, TC is starting to have issues and I was not riding as much. I prioritized work and it ended up being a really really good thing. It let me fully detach from thinking that I'd go back to showing/teaching ever, it let me find hobbies (pottery, drawing, birds, photography, traveling, etc) that were not horse related, and it let me find a life outside of horses for the first time really ever. 

In 2024, I switched teams to a data engineering team and things really started to take off for me, the salary bump made me much more comfortable and the next year I started traveling more. TC remained on the back burner, but in 2025 I decided that I was going to give it one last shot. 

And then now, this year, things are actually going pretty amazing. I got promoted to senior data engineer with a far exceeds expectations, my third one since joining the company just four years before. TC is going better than ever. And I'm truly living my amateur dream life. 

There are times that I miss teaching, I miss taking my clients to shows, I miss working on a tricky movement. I really miss the people I would meet too - boarding on private property and not really doing any clinics (like riding in them) or shows (with my students or my own), means that I don't really talk to horse people very much anymore. Outside of my core friend group, I mostly have conversations about like... work, and birds, and travel plans, what the weather is like, what television show someone is watching, someone's weekend plans, why does that man in the office clear his throat in the most disgusting way? 

But I do think that amateur life is a much better fit for me now. I do not regret the path I took or that I chose to become a professional straight out of being a junior, but I also do not regret the more recent changes either. I love that I get to experience every aspect of riding like this. 

Including traveling way more, like to this amazing
place in Uruguay, where I went for 3 weeks in
January of this year, take that, 23 year old Megan
who never took days off!

I think I'll cut it off here as more of a background post, and in the next one, I'll share more about the differences I've found and what I've learned going from a professional to an amateur. And maybe we'll talk about what the actual paperwork situation is, because I haven't done that yet (no intention of showing this year, but I am qualified to be an amateur now!). 

Do Less

I really need to do a lot of updates but I keep writing them and then not posting them. So today I'm going to talk about my lesson with Kate and then we'll eventually get to the other stuff. Rico is great just to get that out of the way. I think every blog post should have that written first. 

TC has been really good recently. Not great, but good. He had some down time this summer because my little cat went through a health crisis - she was finally diagnosed with small cell lymphoma (a slow moving cancer in her GI and liver) and is doing much better on her medication, but TC has been on the back burner and will unfortunately stay there until she's stabilized. 

TC with his new fly mask

Much of my life looks like this right
now as we try to get her stabilized on
medication + put weight back on

Just as I'm starting to be able to breathe again after Jade's diagnosis, TC decides he wants to see the vet for his eyeballs, so I had to call the emergency vet out one day because his eyes were swollen, red, and had a ton of discharge. He got eye ointment 3x a day for a week and then has been fine. I tell you, I'm not doing much clicker training under saddle anymore, but for things like this, so grateful to have that tool. He went from being very tall to letting you put the ointment in his eyes while loose in his stall. 

THEN we start to come back to work and I have a vacation planned. So I finally just broke down and had my trusty rider ride him. She is a fabulous up and coming young rider who is riding at the PSG level on her own horse, she rides TC so beautifully and she refuses to get wrapped up in his dumb games. So she rode him three times last week, then I decided to keep the momentum going with a lesson today.

Said vacation included riding on this sea plane!

I called him "eyeballs" for a while

As I said, TC has been good, not great. Like we're doing all the stuff, he's doing shoulder-in, haunches-in, half pass. We're doing walk to canter and canter to walk transitions, some counter canter work. I've been working on a little half step to keep him better engaged. You know, we're DOING stuff. This has been really amazing, don't get me wrong, he feels better than he has in years. 

But he doesn't feel like... FABULOUS. Which at least when I was riding with my previous trainer (a couple trainers ago), I was told to come to terms with. TC is not a high quality horse the way that Rico is or some of my former clients' horses. He's a big, loose mover, but the quality just isn't there the way that it is in a purpose bred horse. "Get over it" was what I was told. 

Except that if he's a little luggy or a little blah in the connection, it's not that fun to ride. And I feel like such a jerk saying that because a year or two ago I would have killed to be working on his lateral work again, or the canter work like this. But I've found myself this summer looking more forward to trail rides than to arena rides. So I figured I'd take some lessons and call on my rider more often to help push TC and I past this luggy part. 

Rico looking AMAZING with all his
dapples, btw TC is only an inch taller
than him, wth

Eyeballs eyeing the cows

So today was TC and my first lesson since Kate was out in person in May (just before all my cat drama started). Kate had ridden him and it was like magic, TC was so so sharp to my aids and so together and the best part about it was that HE was super excited about work. 

I want to be able to get him there myself, but I 1) am fully immersed in stereotypical amateurdom right now (mostly just not being fit to ride) and 2) have such an emotional history with this horse that it makes riding him really tricky for me sometimes. Especially when I have to sharpen him up. It's like I'm flooded with the idea of here we go again vs understanding that he can be trained, we fixed the underlying issues that were causing his balking (and if we didn't, I have to work him to find out that his balking is back, and then we'll go to back the vet). 

We started on a square in walk, with Kate wanting me to ride shoulder-in from corner to corner, asking him to halt in shoulder-in. For a horse who was wanting to stop the whole time, having to halt in shoulder-in was surprisingly difficult. It required him to organize himself better and he's not a particularly tidy animal when it comes to his legs and body. 

We talked a lot about the sharpness to the aids since I feel like this is going to be our biggest issue for a while. TC is responsive to the aids, but not sharp to them. And I fall into the trap of it being good enough, especially good enough with a little nagging here and there to keep him from stopping. Kate encouraged me to evaluate how he felt from 1-10, with 10 being extremely sharp, and to also stop nagging/just let him stop. It's a lesson I've had before and will continue to require for the rest of my life. I asked Kate to please record a ringtone or something, toss up some audio on spotify maybe? something that just progressively asks me whether I am doing more work than my horse, so that I could listen to it while riding. Or maybe I'll print out and laminate some signs for myself around the arena. 

TC also got some bombproofing

And I climbed all over him

From there, we continued to address the sharpness with transitions, I was to halt in the corner of our square, then ask TC to trot to the next corner into a halt. If TC didn't respond to my leg aid, I was to tap him lightly, then show him the whip and tap him harder. TC figured this out VERY quickly and was much easier to ride the rest of the lesson. I did discover that some of my hesitation to really demand this is that I get a little left behind sometimes because I am woefully unfit for riding right now and I felt guilty not staying with him when I'm asking him to be forward. 

Kate pointed out that it wouldn't happen if he was reliably forward, and I also decided that like... I'm not even 10% of this horse's body weight, I'm not pulling on him or slamming on his back when it happens, I'm just getting slightly out of balance behind him. So he can deal with it? He works 5 days per week for an hour, two of those days being trail rides? Just handle it bro. 

Because he's literally a kids horse now,
that's my 6yo niece on him bareback on
the trails without me leading him (because
he bites me)

They even played in the sprinklers
together and he loved it

I had really wanted to work on the canter with Kate because I had done some changes about a month ago and while (very excitingly, I am very excited about this) they were all clean, they were also quite downhill. Which granted, was how they used to be too. I definitely want to get the changes better quality and start playing with multiples eventually, but clearly we are not quite there yet. Especially on the left lead, TC feels quite downhill and when I ask him with my aids to sit down a bit, he either quits or props with his hind legs. 

Kate had me alternate between shoulder out to haunches-in, to shoulder-in in canter. I'd done a little half pass on him in canter about a month ago but haven't really done much lateral work in canter at all. Right now the canter feels more like survival than work. But this work completely changed things for us. Not only did he feel more uphill, it kind of distracted me from babying him about the canter. Like he can sustain a canter for longer than I thought. And it also let us have a few discussions about what to do when he breaks. I'm supposed to scoot him forward - and I tend to not let him break. I get too involved in hoiking him along and then that's just how we canter. 

We talked a bit about how sometimes with these horses that are good like this, there are not a lot of training opportunities. Like he's doing a good job, he's responsive enough, he's collected enough, he's supple enough. And especially if I'm intervening when there's a chance he won't be quite right, that leaves me zero time to actually train him to be better. He needs to make a mistake, be asked not to make that mistake, then be allowed to make the mistake again and choose not to, then be rewarded for the right choice. Not prevented from making the mistake in the first place and not be rewarded for anything because I'm like eh it was fine. 

Once I had scooted him forward for breaking a couple of times from canter, the canter felt WAY more rideable and way better. Like he was taking me much more seriously and I could just focus on the exercise instead of thinking so much about the horse under me. 

He's learned to stand still a bit better
for his kids when grooming too

Lots of tractor work recently for me

Our last bit of work was some more in the trot. I felt like I had plenty in canter to work on - mostly lateral work and just letting him break, I want to try that for a couple of weeks and see where we are. But the trot historically has been quite difficult for me. We did an exercise that hurt my brain - a figure-8 where one circle was shoulder-in and one was shoulder out. Then we did an even worse exercise that hurt my brain even more, I can't even remember it, it was a ton of lateral work all in walk. 

The idea in the lateral work is again to get him just trucking along on his own. I want to help too much and get my legs all doing stuff. I have a LOT of work to do in this department, I feel so awkward in the lateral work now after not doing it for so long. Sometimes it feels like my upper body is just doing stuff on its own and then I'm like hey wait a minute, why am I collapsing like that. 

The other thing I need to work on is giving him more support with my left rein when tracking right. That is the hand I like to pull on, but I've definitely overcompensated for the pulling by not really having it connect. So when we do our lateral work to the right, he doesn't stand up so well on the left front because there's no support there for him. Instead, he folds his neck in half to the right and juts the base of his neck to the left. Once I had him straighter, he felt way way better. 

Little cat taking advantage of my policy
with old/sick animals: they can do what
they want, Rico is proud I'm sure

All in all it was a fabulous lesson. I feel so lucky to have Kate helping me with my silly gray horse. I'm genuinely looking forward to my next ride on him! Hopefully as things with my little cat stabilize (right now she's getting blood work every 2 weeks as we try to get her liver values back to normal, hopefully we can get to a point where she only needs blood work every 2-3 months!) I can ramp up my lessons and maybe even some training rides from my rider so that we can get TC into more work without me having to ride so much since I do need to do my job. 

This fall may be a little wonky as my priority stays with my little cat, but I'm really hoping to set us up well for next year. Because I think I've decided I'd really like to get this horse back to the show ring. Even if it's just at Training level or something. And honestly just for the pictures and so that I can get my amateur status finalized and put my first ride as an amateur into my record. Also I had bought a new coat I haven't worn in the show ring yet, a travesty.