Bridleless

Monday morning I headed down to the barn to get a ride in before heading to my offsite. I've been a little overwhelmed due to a variety of reasons lately, one of which is that my saddle isn't fitting me and the way I'm having to ride in it to avoid being harmed by it is now making TC back sore. So it's getting fixed and TC has been on a light schedule being ridden in the TCS and trail riding a lot. 

Not a coincidence that his left lead was best when
there wasn't a way for me to pull on the left rein lol

On Saturday, I rode TC with my neck rope. The TCS gives me no ability to stay with him when he surges, so I've been meaning to put my neck strap on. But that lives in my car and so I decided to use the neck rope instead.

He wanted to stretch down so I ended up dropping the reins and feeling like I could actually ride in the thing! I decided to work up to bridleless riding this fall. 

Sunday we went on the trails, but Monday I grabbed my pivo just in case we could get some fun video of us trying out our bridleless riding. I didn't know how far we'd get but thought it'd be fun!

He spent basically the entire time stretching at
the trot

Turns out we got really far! I started out by just tying my reins in a knot and having them right there for me to grab. But I never grabbed them, so I ended up removing his bridle and then trotting around. He stretched way down and seemed to enjoy it! 

After that, he started offering me everything he does at liberty! We work at liberty on occasion and he loves it, he plays with different behaviors and I shape the cue after clicking for the behavior a few times. We have funny games we play and I've been very slowly shaping a piaffe-like movement as well. 

He offered me turns on the forehand, rein back (which has been terrible with the bridle, interesting!), and jambette. 

After that, we picked up the canter for about a half circle in each direction! I was starting to run out of time at that point and decided to just let us be done there since we'd gotten way further than I thought we would on our first dedicated day of riding bridleless! 

Best boy, he had so much fun!

I'm so pleasantly surprised by how it went! It was such a blast and I felt super confident on him, even in only the TCS and after not a huge amount of work. 

Hopefully we get our saddle back soon so we can go back to normal work, but I think I definitely want to develop this stuff with him. It was a great challenge to be even clearer with my aids and intention and he thought it was great too. 

In addition, this is making me want to get him a side pull, even just to trail ride in. I've always wanted to have something where I had really good brakes but I think we're beyond needing that! We'll see where we end up going with all of this, either way, we're having fun. 

Riding in the TCS

So as you know, Kate handed me a small strip of leather a couple of weeks ago and I fell in love with it! I was very skeptical... I figured TC would go relatively well in it because I'd seen how many of Kate's horses loved it, but I really love myself a good... seat and flap. 

But I actually really liked it! 

Crazy looking thing

It really is a small strip of leather. The company has a lot of info about some pressure analysis and all of that, but I figure I'm about 10% of TC's weight at the very most and he's been quite tolerant of my bareback saddle. I was also not going to switch fully over to the TCS as my main saddle, it was at least something to borrow and at most I figured I'd get one to use when my saddle needed to be worked on. 

I decided to put my sticky pad, my thickest saddle pad, and then my Lamicell half pad on before putting the TCS on. The billets are a little shorter than a normal dressage saddle, so poor TC was subjected to the pony's long girth for the kiddos' saddle and the pony actually ended up using TC's dressage girth. 

Feeling so good, this was just the second ride, I
need to grab video from more recent rides

It was honestly more comfortable than I expected, that Lamicell is no joke, it's so squishy! I had to adjust my stirrups a little higher than I normally would want them for dressage because there just wasn't anything keeping my leg anywhere and I felt more comfortable laying against his shape with that length. Plus, the stirrup bars are lower down (to distribute pressure better). 

I don't feel all that unstable, except that I am 100% falling off the first time TC leaps through the air. He's bolted in it and I think thought about leaping and then was surprised when I nearly fell off the back as he went to bolt so he stopped. 

Look at how much he's reaching even though I'm
struggling to not fly off the back of him

The rides have been STELLAR. I can feel absolutely everything. I can barely describe in actual words what I'm feeling, but I'll try.  

1.) TC uses his long back muscles in completely different ways and I've been working on getting those to be more even by switching my posting diagonal here and there. When they are more even, he is way better in the contact (especially stretching to the left rein). 

2.) TC does not fill the left side of his body, especially his shoulder, and especially in left lead canter. I've remedied this in the past by imagining that the right side of his body is over stuffed and pushing the stuffing to the left. I'm feeling now that the right side is stuffed a normal amount and that I need to generate more stuffing. What that means? How to do it? No idea, but it's really improved his canter and his connection. 

3.) At the canter, I couldn't get him to connect evenly to both reins so easily, some of this was the two points above, but some of it was the connection from my leg to my hand. I realized how much I have been sort of relying on chasing him to my hand vs having him step to my hand. The tempo has slowed way down and the quality feels completely different. I'll try to get some new video this weekend to see what it looks like! This second ride (the pictures in this post) was mostly about my survival hahaha

Such a good boy

I definitely have ordered one of these saddles! I still LOVE my actual saddle, but it's needing some more adjustments than just the one we did last week so it'll be nice to have something to ride in while it's out getting that done. 

I also might ride in the TCS once a week just to work on the connection/evenness of the long back muscles and to keep both of us accountable in terms of my saddle. If he feels a million times better in the TCS, probably time to get my saddle fitter out! 

WW: Total Contact Saddle

Sometimes I think that my friendship with Kate might lead to me falling off of this horse for real. 

Half pad not included with saddle 

It's literally just a strip of leather

There is just nothing there

Orrrr maybe I should be thanking Kate?

Whaaaat 

I'm buying one