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. 

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. 

Straightness and Connection

Over the weekend, I had really good rides on TC! 

I rode in the arena on Friday and Monday, and then Saturday we did a trail ride at home and on Sunday he had the day off since I had a prior obligation that kept me away from the barn. 

Requires cookies

Does not require hugs, rider wanted a hug though

My ride right after our trail ride last week (I think Tuesday?) wasn't the best. I think he was tired and just a little above where he needed to be, not really lifting through his shoulders. But he also only had the one day off in between. I did more face pulling than I had been doing and I ended up cutting the ride a little short. We did a trail ride at home on Wednesday and that was great, then he had Thursday off. 

Friday I came out and ended up riding in the middle of the day. After sleeping VERY well for two weeks, I told people I was sleeping well AND I got my hopes up that after eight years of insomnia, I'd finally fixed it; so naturally, I haven't been able to sleep a lick since.

It was a bit hot, so TC and I struggled a little through the warm up. I'm still not quite sure how to approach the warm up with him. I tend to get a little frustrated that he starts out slow (not balky, but like, could you have an ounce more power in any of your gaits) and I'm sure he's frustrated that I want to skip the warm up and jump right into doing work when he's now fifteen years old and has some joint stuff. 

Lots of ranch work this weekend, pastures got
mowed!

And trails got widened/worked on!

I've tried employing what I did with Rico years ago, which is to canter first. But this horse is not a canter horse, if we do that, his canter just feels lethargic and gross. So we trot first, doing big circles and some easy transitions. Then we canter and it's absolutely fine. And then finally when we come back to trot, he seems happy to work. 

Again, acknowledging that being happy to work hasn't really been him at any point of his rides the last few years, so it's great that we can get there!

I can't quite remember exactly what we worked on that day, but most of my work these days are on:

1. Remembering that I know how to ride horses

2. Shoulder-in

3. Counter canter loops

4. Walk to canter

And now reading that back, it sounds like we're schooling Second level. We are not! I just find that these exercises are really good for us. 

Oh hello counter canter!?

Shoulder-in, which we also did on Monday, has been super helpful for getting him to find more stability in his body and finding the diagonal connection from the inside hind leg over his body to the outside rein. Tracking left, he feels pretty good, but tracking right, he really struggles. He wants to come a little above the outside rein and twist his neck. 

Counter canter loops, and on Monday, 20m half circles in counter canter, have been great for the straightness and the connection. He again gets kinda twisty in his body and my enthusiasm for pulling on the left rein means that we go careening sideways in canter sometimes. 

And finally, the walk to canter transition is something he's long been good at and enjoys, but he likes to jump to the outside of the line during the transition, AND it's obvious to me when he does it AND I'm a better canter rider than trot. So I figure that I can help him find straightness in the transition and that this will help us find straightness in the canter in general. 

So a friend told me that putting a fake
dragonfly on your horse keeps flies
away and I think it's so funny (and I 
kind of think it works?)

And he's just happy?

The remembering how to ride horses thing keeps happening. I haven't had that many lessons since 2020, and even then I was mostly riding alone. Which is FINE I was a professional. Now I am not, I'm deep in amateurdom after years of not really riding. I'm also not nearly as fit as I was before and am super out of practice. 

On Friday, I remember going along thinking, wow, he's kinda down in his shoulder, bummer. And then a circle or two later I was like OH, what if I... asked him not to be. And I put my leg on and kinda bumped him up under himself and he said yes! And then it all went so so much better. 

Then on Monday, and if my Pivo hadn't been such an asshole, I'd have a hilarious video, because I was trotting and kind of lamenting about how unstable I felt in the trot, like he kept falling out in this one place and I was just letting him do it and reacting to it rather than preventing it. And I think I said out loud right near the camera "oh my god I could use my abs for this" and again the ride went much better. 

Remember how you have abs?

So much reach with his hind end now

Luckily I find this just hilarious. I'm truly enjoying experiencing both sides of the coin. I put so much pressure on myself to ride well and learn as much as I could and be USDF Gold Medalist Megan. And now I get to be an amateur, and I'm learning SO much about myself and about horses and about dressage from this other side. Maybe I should write down what the differences feel like. 

Anyway, what it means is that I can remain in really good spirits about the whole thing. When I forget how to ride horses it just cracks me up, like people used to pay me to do this and now I'm like oh woops, why is my hand over there? How long has it been like that? Have I always done that?

Truly I'm having the time of my life no matter what is going on with my riding. 

Achieving Our Goals

TC and I continue to have just the best rides. It warmed up a bit this last week and even though TC got a little quiet in the heat, he still came out ready to work. Even if he insists on me dragging him into the arena each time. 

I set up my Pivo a couple of times because I'm really struggling to figure out what he looks like vs what he feels like. That's always been the case with him - he'll feel really connected and he's actually super short in the neck, or he'll feel off the bit but he's actually pleasantly in front of the vertical. 

The happy ears are the best part!

Still has a ridiculous tail

The first video I took led me to shorten the reins quite a bit in the second video and actually put the horse together. I think I mentioned it a little bit ago, I kind of forget how to ride right now. Between being super out of shape, kind of primed to think that anything he does is fine as long as it's not balking, and not having many lessons in the past six years, I'm a bit of a mess. 

But there was something about the second ride where I just... remembered what the actual hell I was supposed to do. 

I think it was the canter. I've always been a much better canter rider than trot rider and because his balking happened so much going into canter, I didn't get a lot of time riding the canter poorly, because we just weren't doing it. 

Because of that, when I put him into canter and he slowed a little, I bumped him with his leg and he went. And after that, I was like cool, I can put my mechanic into him then, and that's what we did. 

He seemed to be really happy about it! I think he's figuring out that he can actually canter again, and I'm sure that me putting my mechanic into him helped him find his balance and straightness a bit more. 

Excuse me? I had no idea what to do with this

This was more the balance we were in, which is
also great and more appropriate for his fitness level

The lateral work is a bit tough for us right now, I know we need to deal with that, but I've decided that it'll be Kate's problem. So rather than work too much at it, I decided to do something I was good at, which was to put him on quarterline in a bit of a shoulder-fore and do some walk to canter transitions.

He's quite crooked in canter like a lot of them are and this is one of the exercises that I think helped the most. He's pretty motivated to do a walk to canter for some reason (I think he thinks they are fun and very special) and will find his way into canter even if I'm blocking a lot of the directions he'd rather go. So all that is left over is to canter in a straight line. 

And damn, it worked so well! He really sat down and was able to strike off into a much better quality canter. 

I'm so impressed with him

Don't worry, I got a new phone so the screenshot
quality is about to get much better

The day after we did these canter transitions, I decided to do the same thing in the walk to trot transition, which was much harder for him. But he still tried SO hard at them and we got some really good moments of him picking up trot from a bit of a shoulder-fore!

I negotiated with him and let him school over some poles in between, so that kept him happy I think. He did keep trying to guess at what we were doing, so I had to keep telling him he was wrong, which he doesn't love. But he could take even thirty seconds to consider what I am asking him to do... 

I can actually half halt him now

He feels so good!

Again I'm so tickled that we have something real to work on!! 

I remember having a conversation with Kate about my goals with TC. Like I can't expect him to come back to work as if nothing happened, zip back up the levels, take him out at Fourth level and then move him to the PSG. He is fifteen years old this year and I'm also not really in a place where I can or even want to focus on climbing the levels again. 

I do love riding his canter

I came up with these goals:

1. I want to be able to ride him and actually work on things, not just fight with him about being forward

2. I want to keep him fit enough to feed more and go on trail rides/do fun things (like obstacle clinics)

3. I want him to look nice while I ride him so I can take video and not be like ew why does he look like that

And I think I have achieved all of those things! We'll see how things go through this summer because that's always a tough time for us. But I never would have thought that we'd get this far even during the time of year where things are easy for us. Onward and upward!

Back on the Trails

It has been quite some time since I took TC out on the trails at our local trail facility. Honestly I can't remember the last time I took him off the property for a trail ride. 

Happy ears!

I'm super lucky that we have a very convenient hillside to ride on at the ranch. I can do one loop in 25 minutes and two loops in 45 minutes and it's quite a bit of climbing. Because of that, I stopped needing to haul him out weekly for hill work to keep his stifle functional, but I still would take him out for longer rides and for fun. 

That is, until we went through everything we went through. I've tried to bring him back a few times, but the one facility that is my default trail facility has a lot of hills, and I've not been able to get him fit enough to feel like I can take him there and do the full loop that we do. Honestly, I've also not wanted to take the time to do it either, I really lost a lot of motivation to do much riding with all the issues we were having.

So much fun

On Sunday though, I decided it was time to start getting him used to hauling out and trail riding again. And it was so much fun! 

We got to the facility and there was some kind of fancy photoshoot happening with a girl in a beautiful dress and a friesian all dressed up with matching ribbons in his mane. TC unloaded and was surprisingly quiet, I thought he might think that we were there for a photoshoot with the way he was watching them. 

The mustard is kind of crazy

The bay area really can be beautiful

A little boy came over and seemed very interesting in petting TC. His grandmother asked if they could and I said yes, TC loves kids. And then the closer the kid was brought to TC, the more TC eyed him and the more the boy cried. Poor TC, denied a photoshoot and friendship. 

I tacked him up and hopped on and he was so so good immediately. Again, this is our normal trail facility and he's been ridden there since he was a baby. But it was a bit cold and windy and outside of the fancy friesian, we were the only horse there. We marched out to the gate on a loose rein and I very stupidly put on my instagram how chill he was. 

Love these trails

Because after that he started screaming and showing me all the stuff that was different since he'd gone there two years ago. Like yeah, they added a sign there, I'm sorry, I should have let them know not to change the place at ALL in the years since you have been here. 

But it was still a super pleasant ride, just like when he was a baby, if he was getting a bit unruly (and these days that's just whinnying and like, walking with a lot of huffiness), he gets pointed up a hill. 

I thought this was so funny

Happy boy (mostly)

I wasn't sure how much of the trail I actually wanted to do, I figured I'd see how he felt. He was going to have Monday off regardless and he's been doing both loops at home, plus some extra work on the tracks, adding up to about 75 minutes of light to moderate hill work. This was about 30 minutes more than that and a bit more climbing. 

He got a little over halfway still with enough lung capacity to scream and stare aggressively through the mustard at people, so I decided to do the whole loop. 

It's so gorgeous there

 

We got to the end of the ride with him feeling a bit tired, but still not so tired he didn't try to take me on a second loop. He got to meet two women who wanted to pet him and so I said yes and he got some attention. And he only had one minor spook at the end when two cyclists came bombing down the hill behind him and slammed on their brakes, skidding directly behind TC. 

He zipped forward about two strides before I turned around. The cyclists took that to mean they should race by us and he handled that just fine, but I called after them that like hey, you should probably ask the rider before doing that. Luckily he is the best boy and even without seeing a bike for actual years, he didn't care. 

Unsure of going back home

Tired boy after a trail ride

Finally I got him back to the trailer with a lot of protesting from him, he really didn't want to leave. When he got home, Rico was very happy to see him, and TC rolled, grazed a bit, and took a nap standing in his porch next to Rico. 

I was super pleased with the whole ordeal! He was stellar and best of all, we made it all the way around for the first time in YEARS. I'm so grateful to have this horse back. 

Closing in on the Answer - The Saddle

Alright, I kind of went over briefly how much better TC is doing but I wanted to dedicate an entire post to it. 

Tracks are a little overgrown but still
remain my favorite thing I've done at
the ranch in a while

Essentially, things somewhat took a turn for the worse in March just because of the winter and my travel schedule. That's totally fine, I wasn't too bummed about it, but it made me realize that I need to give TC more consistency when I am out of town, so I decided to try to find someone to ride TC during those times. 

Basically what happened was that he came out a bit lame one day on his left hind, which is normal when he has been out of work, and especially if it has been raining and he's been locked on his paddock (which is 50' long, it's not a small paddock, but he's used to moving around a lot in his pasture). Normally, I give him a couple days off with some bute on board, then I kinda just push him through it and add hill work. Typically he's better within the week. But this time, pushing him through it resulted in him feeling WORSE later on in rides vs better. So rather than just taking a little longer to warm up, he was getting progressively more uneven throughout the ride. 

So that warranted starting our rehab over a bit and dropping from 15-20 minutes of trot back to 30 second trot sets adding up to like 5 minutes of trot. 

Hill work: required

Meanwhile, Kate and I were talking saddles. She learned SO much at her Stubben training and I was in Uruguay in the back of a van being schlepped across the country when she downloaded most of it to me. It blew my mind, specifically the following with regards to TC:

- The shorter tree points of my previous saddle (not the old Custom, but the non-Custom custom one I'd ordered a few years ago) definitely were what destroyed his shoulder. He was going well in fall 2021 and then that saddle came through and cut into his shoulder blade. Poor boy. That made the balking much worse. 

- My current saddle, the Pegasus, is fine, but it is still probably a bit too much pressure around the withers, TC has humongous withers (not super tall but just a lot of surface area) and most saddles sit way too close to his spine/withers. When there is pressure on the sides of the wither, there is a bundle of nerves that gets crushed and this causes horses to want to stop. It's the same bundle of nerves that stallions bite when they breed mares. 

- There is a bundle of nerves probably right under where my girth lands on his side, which can also be irritating to him. He's always been funny about girths, he wants his girth quite tight, and I wonder if this is why.

- TC is actually quite narrow, I feel like he's been in trees that were too wide for him a lot of his life. This can also put pressure on the wither area, which again causes horses to want to stop. 

He loves an audience

A few weeks ago, Kate was in town and I wanted to kill two birds with one stone, so she brought a client's saddle out AND one of her advanced riders. We put the saddle on TC and I took the first half of the lesson, then her rider got on and we did a quick evaluative ride so that when I was in Ireland, she could ride TC for me so that he didn't get a week off. 

I got on TC in the saddle and immediately felt a huge difference in the contact, TC was RIGHT there, which was a really good sign. He's never just... in the contact. He's been a really complicated horse in the contact for a long time, he struggles to reach evenly to both reins, he likes to retract the neck, and he drops through the base of his neck quite a bit. Except not anymore, because apparently ALL of that was caused by saddle fit. And it's not like he hasn't been in well fitted saddles (at least, fit professionally) for most of his life. 

We picked up trot and he was quite happy to do so without contorting his body. Just a week before, I was lamenting to Kate that he was getting stuck in a new corner, balking a bit, but in the new saddle, he was happy to step right through the corner.

It's just EASY what the hell

We put her rider on and he was... so unbelievably smug. First of all, he loves an audience, and second, he loves a kid. She's an adult, but a young adult, and I could tell from his facial expression that he thought his dreams were coming true, that she was going to be his new kid (young adult). His ears were pressed very far forward as they do when he is excited, so far forward that they were almost facing each other. 

And Kate had her ask him for some more advanced movements than I had in a while - shoulder-in, half pass, haunches-in - and TC was definitely having fun taking her through the movements. It was almost like he was trying to be super duper professional with her, like if I asked for half pass, he'd have been like, seriously? we haven't done that in ages, jeez. But when she asked, he was like oh yes, half pass, I am very trained and you are just a small child (young adult) and I will show you how. She is riding at the PSG level by the way, he's such a mansplainer. 

When we got done, I led him back to the barn, but instead, he stuck really close to her, as if to say "okay cool, when is the vet check? can you take me home today or do I have to wait?" ready to totally abandon me. Bro, I raised you!

Look how happy he is

I was really excited about the saddle, but obviously it's owned by a client of Kate's, so it left with the new love of TC's life (her student and just generally an audience) and I immediately messaged the local Stubben rep, who happened to be in town the next day!!

She came out and I got to try a few of the saddles. Again, TC went SO well in them, but I was really having trouble deciding between them. I told her that I was a little nervous to commit right away for a couple of reasons. 

1. TC is hopefully (and can confirm this is true 2.5 weeks later) going to positively explode with muscle now that he can move properly, so ordering a saddle when he's at his most undermuscled feels like a recipe for having to bring the fitter out a ton and maybe him outgrowing a tree.

2. I'm not sure what will happen with his gaits and how much support I'm going to need from the saddle if he is going to get his big gaits back. His trot and canter have definitely gotten smaller over the years just because he can't support the bigger gaits. I was worried about ordering a saddle with a smaller block and then a few months later being like... cool I can't sit these gaits anymore.

Luckily, Stubben really does seem to want to do what is best for horse and rider, so I was left with a demo saddle for as long as it takes me to figure out the answers to those questions. My goal is to get him back to full work and start to sit his trot. That will allow me to buy a saddle for a fit, somewhat well muscled horse (or at least we'll know what direction we're going in) AND to make sure that I give myself the support I need to handle his hopefully enormous gaits. 

Look how good he looks!

I think I've done a good job not letting myself go down the "if only I had..." rabbit hole. Maybe it'll come later. But I did the best that I could with the information I had at the time. 

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how much you can just trust a saddle fitter (or any equine professional, or professional in general), like they can be a good saddle fitter, and STILL the saddle might not *actually* work BEST for the horse. And it's hardest when the horse is going pretty well in the saddle - the concept of like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

But at the same time, there's that other saying where like, good is the enemy of great. I think both of these little sayings get to me at work - I really do like my job, it gives me a lot of freedom (unlimited vacation, which I've been taking advantage of this year, I think I'm at 5 weeks of vacation so far and it's only April lol) and I enjoy what I do and the people I do it with, but I also know that if I really push myself, I could improve my salary quite a bit if I moved companies. Luckily they sensed me getting squirmy so they promoted me so I don't have to revisit this for a while. So I get to think about it with TC instead!

Basically since the saddle situation was mostly pretty good over the years, I didn't really put a huge amount of weight into it as the primary driving force behind his balking. But it turns out, it might be most of the answer. Only time will tell!