Tiny Jomps

So I've been continuing to ride little Sunny, my mom's 14.2h (or so) pony. We skipped our potential western dressage schooling show this last weekend because of the smoke. It probably would have been fine but when the entries were due, we had no idea what was going to happen. 

I broke down this spring when I was desperately saddle shopping and bought a brockamp bareback pad. When I first got it, I was not toooo impressed, it just felt like a regular bareback pad. But then after riding in it, I got in my saddle (well, the demo saddle I gave back) and it felt insanely slippery. Then I realized that it's not just the cushioniness that makes that bareback pad amazing, I don't think I could fall off using it even if I tried. 

Dear, Sunny, that is not a challenge. Oh, TC would never. 

Look how excited he was to jump tiny jumps, also
wow he has lost weight, he was very chonky when
I started riding him

Anyway, my niece came out to ride with me a week and a half ago and I put her on the bareback pad in front of me and it was super comfortable. After that, I just started using it on him more than the western saddle. 

All last week and this weekend I played with the cavallettis that I talked about last week. I went from the circle of death to two outside lines set a forward 5/short 6 apart. We practiced cantering them and adjusting his step. 

On Friday, I decided to raise them because both TC and Sunny kept shifting the lines by knocking poles. That made it way harder for me to adjust him since I had to remember who moved what pole where. I just raised the inside side of the pole because there are only six cavalletti blocks and also I got tired of moving things around in the heat. 

Those are tennis shoes, yes

Sunny had SO MUCH FUN cantering over the poles. I had my pivo on and this helped me realize that my problem on Sunny has been that he's kind of underpowered over fences. That means he has to lurch over the jumps and when he gets to the other side, he figures he'll just keep bronc bucking. He's just an adorable little pony, so he needs a bit of speed to make up for his little legs?

I called Kate and chatted with her about it. It's also my tendency to underpower Flounder to the fences so I had to tell her that I was going to practice racing at all the jumps on Sunny. I can't believe she still wants to teach me after all of the obnoxious things I say about my return to jumping. 

That... IS a western bridle, you are very astute

I put up a little jump on Saturday and decided to try it out. We started with the world's tiniest cross rail and ended up with the world's second most tiny cross rail, but he was actually really good! 

My goal was to ride the lines in five and then turn to the fence, keeping the same pace. I also wanted Sunny to take me a bit more to the fence like Flounder does, so teaching him to come out of the corners powerfully to get over the line (the arena is like... ten Sunny strides long) really helped him stay powerful through the corner to the single fence. 

Yes... that is a dressage whip, we are a very confused
pair, okay??

We only jumped it a few times and I called it quits. I think today (or whenever, I don't know when this post is going to go out), I'll put up two other jumps, (remember, limited cavallettis here) and try to ride more of a course. I need more than one jump to not teach a horse to stop after jumps because I will absolutely stop 2-3 strides after landing if I can, I have no idea where that habit came from. 

Then hopefully we can haul over to Kate's barn fairly soon! I think she's got a jumping saddle that I can borrow.

Poles for Everyone

I put out poles a couple of weeks ago. Now, by poles, I mean "poles" because they are just little sticks that hold up baby trees. They were free when I was riding Rico and on a crazy budget and they've held up for the last what, eight years? Pretty good deal! 

There are six of them left, so I figured I should set them out and if I like using them, I should see about investing in some real poles. Even when TC and I leave the ranch, my niece will be learning to ride there so poles will be helpful for her. But she is only eighteen months so isn't anywhere near trot poles yet. 

I set up three poles on a circle of death of sorts, then put the other three poles in the middle as trot poles. And then I tormented both horses with them! 

That split behind is really exciting! He could try a
little harder to avoid stepping on the pole though

While I focus on the steering, the canters like this
jeez TC

Sunny at least knows how to jump, so he's been downright fun to do the circle of death on. It's been really helpful because he is an inherently lazy creature who doesn't care if I think he's doing a good job (he's starting to let his guard down a bit, I think he's just been ridden by a lot of people in his day so he just sits in the back of the classroom and gets his work done while TC sits at the front of the class with his hand up like the nerd he is). He does seem to think the poles are fun though so it helps him stay up in front of my leg. 

He's a compact little thing so the trot poles, set for TC's collected trot, are a bit long for him which is perfect as I start trying to get him to let me vary his stride length in trot. I can definitely get a little difference in stride length in canter, but man his trot has one set stride length and a wide variety of tempos. I'd really love it to be the exact opposite of that. 

So we're doing a lot of making a tiny trot before the poles, then trying to push forward over them, and back to the tiny trot on the other side. I haven't done it enough to say it's working, but it's definitely more fun than endless forward and back around the arena. 

It's really challenging our straightness, he likes
to lean against my left leg tracking left, who knew?

Pretty uphill for just kind of steering and pushing
him forward

TC, on the other hand, has no natural ability to jump unless you count jumping out of his paddock from a stand still when he was four or the year and a half of leaping (over nothing) he did in his youth. He has done a lot of trot poles though so we've got that going for us! I mostly just want him to do them every day for his fitness and to work on the DAP going on in his working trot. 

The canter poles are what I find most interesting on him. While he is absolutely terrible at them in so many ways, I'm loving the canter I'm finding between the poles. It takes him a few rounds to start to relax his topline over the poles themselves, but even when the poles are ugly, the canter in between is fabulous. 

I also just like giving him time to canter without expectations on him. He will trot for days on a long/loose rein but he is WEIRD about the canter. There's so much management that goes into it and while I appreciate that he'll let me influence him, I don't love that he can't just freaking canter without input. I'd like to get him out to the horse park (that was going to be my project this year but we have been saddleless enough that a membership didn't make sense) and let him go on the gallop track at some point but he gets weird even if I get into a half seat on him in the arena at the canter. 

So the poles are helping him be more aware of his feet and his own balance rather than depending on me. Whether that will significantly positively impact the dressage, who knows, but for me, I like that it's giving him something to think about on his own vs me always telling him what each foot should be doing. 

I can't emphasize how little I was doing, it's kind 
of annoying honestly

Go TC go!

At this point, I'm leaning heavily toward getting some more poles! It's nice to be able to just leave them out in the arena (I have them strategically placed so they're easy to ride around) and I figure I'll keep a canter and a trot exercise set up at all times. I drag the arena about every other week (two horses five days a week doesn't use up the arena all that much lol) so I can reset the exercises then. And honestly both TC and Sunny stand quietly while I mess around with the poles so even if I have an idea on a whim, I can just change it up. 

For now, my six poles are making riding really fun right now so we'll keep on keeping on and I'll start looking at getting a set of real poles soon enough!

Cavalletti Clinic

This weekend, my chapter of CDS finally got to host their cavalletti clinic! It's literally almost been a year in the making. We were supposed to have it last spring, but then covid, so it was pushed to the summer, but then fires, so it was pushed to fall, but then smoke... so now we had it in February! 

It was PERFECT timing given that 1) TC and I had had our first lesson with Jec (but no second one because of rain, I'm excited to go back soon!) using cavalletti to improve his posture and 2) my vet had just seen TC and recommended cavalletti as a strengthening exercise. I really do want to get him doing cavalletti at least once a week, but with the rain and my schedule (I need extra time to set up the cavalletti and don't often have it), we haven't been able to do it too much. 

So many poles!

The clinician was a cavalletti specialist, who does these clinics I think for a living. TC and I were in a group with three other horses of roughly the same size but of varying skill levels. 

We got there a bit early and had to wait a little bit. I think TC really wanted to get there and WORK so he spent the time waiting getting himself all in a tither about being at a PLACE and needing to do a THING. He's been funny about his work lately, like way way overenthused to do it, so this wasn't unusual but I did have flashbacks of his youth and realized that he's not so dark anymore so I can't even pretend he's a child. 

He did eventually settle with some canter work and realizing what was going to happen during the clinic. It was an unusual clinic, he hasn't done a ton of clinics and really not a lot of group work where we have to go in a particular order, so it was great exposure for him! 

And he did!

At the beginning, she had the four of us tell her the age and breed of our horses and that was it. I found that interesting as I always ask riders for their life stories but I think she really has her process down pat and just wanted to know what to expect from the horses (younger, older, typical breed responses to cavalletti maybe?). 

She put us in a specific order (TC and I were second) and we walked through four poles that were not raised, then we walked through them when she raised alternating sides. She said what she wanted us to do was 1) stay very straight, 2) sit very deep and back, and 3) keep our hands as wide as the shoulders. 

Straightness was not an issue, but the sitting very deep/back with very wide hands made my carefully sculpted, Mary Wanless inspired position VERY uncomfortable. She kept emphasizing to me (because despite trying, my position was disobedient) that I had to keep my hands wide to engage my core (disagree) and that I had to sit back to lift his withers (disagree, maybe my brain was like "nope" and prevented me from doing it lol oh no). 

I tried hard to do the things she wanted me to do because I always go into lessons with the mindset of "trying for one ride won't kill you," (and I appreciate that in my clients too!). Unfortunately, the patterns that keep me in my position are apparently VERY strong, especially when TC went through the raised poles and his trot changed, so I felt bad that I couldn't do it for her. One of the ladies in the clinic is also a MW person and we laughed about how it felt like I had my helmet touching his butt and I was still on vertical (she wanted me slightly behind vertical and apparently my spine doesn't want me to do that).

He thought he did a good job so he
wanted a cookie

We went through the cavalletti one at a time and after every time, she would add another pole. TC and I worked up to 14 poles in a row! He was really good about the whole thing once he realized that if he quietly hung out between trots, he didn't have to work as hard. For a while, I had to canter him in between to calm him down and he kept seeing the other horses standing patiently and I think it occurred to him that he could also stand patiently. 

Most of our feedback outside of my position was to get TC's neck down and "supple" him in the poles. I didn't want to be rude but I also wanted to stay true to my horse. He certainly can reach for contact more, but neck down is not something I equate to reaching to contact at this point in my education. I also don't know how to supple a horse through some cavalletti on a straight line without shuttling the bit back and forth. So I worked to get him more supple and into the bridle in our circles before the poles and she did seem to be happier by the end, so that's good!

Other than that though, the trot felt really good, he got very passage like and I felt more lift than his normal fake passage he's been offering me (and with the poles, guaranteeing that he was tracking up, which he loses in his fake passage). He got lots of praise for that and with so many poles, I hope I got that patterned into me so I can ask him for it again sans poles. It's good for him to learn to add suspension in his trot one way or another. 

He thought her bag had cookies in it

I can't really say how much I got out of the lesson. I think maybe if I'd gotten some video, I'd have come to a firmer conclusion about it. I think the different position didn't allow me to feel as much as I normally can (especially the wide hands, my god that just made it feel awful). I did see really good changes in the other horses, so I'm thinking that the changes were there on TC, I just couldn't feel it. 

I really don't want this post to come across negatively, because despite not getting a huge amount of TC-specific help, I thought she was a fabulous clinician! I kept thinking "I wish I had Rico for this clinic!" because it would have been AMAZING to do it on him. TC is just a tricky horse in the contact and we frequently run into these types of situations where generally good instruction just doesn't work with him because of his neck getting so short so easily. 

But it was good to see how he did with so many poles, I think we'll up our game during our cavalletti days at home. And I definitely want to go see Jec again and get some more exercises from her. 

He had a good time

Although it didn't blow my mind, it was so fun! I definitely want to go again sometime and hopefully TC's connection will be a bit better with him understanding the game and with some continued work through cavalletti on our own. 

Apparently on the second day she does do cavalletti on a curved line, I didn't realize it'd be two different exercises for the two days or I would have signed up for the second day. Given that I know the spacing and I don't think the instructions would be very different though, I think I'm going to just set up our own curved line of poles this week and see how that goes for us! 

Bring the Shoulderblade Back

On Thursday I had a lesson with a new trainer! I think I'm going to use this spring to take a few lessons with a bunch of people (within reason) and try to figure out a training situation that works for us. It might take some tweaking but it's not a bad year to use to figure this out given that he is already pretty solidly at the level I want to show him at. 

My main goal has been to find people who have a good eye for the basics and have them help me. One of the people nearby who I figured would be a good one is Jec! She is nearby, only about an hour's haul on roads I'm familiar with, and is someone who you hear talking about posture and stability in a way that I really like and think would be really helpful for TC. 

The last day of sun before the giant
storm rolling through the bay area

I made the mistake of not really examining the property on the street view of google maps so I definitely drove right past her property and got myself stuck on the following street, which was a dead end. Great. It was only one lane so I had to go into some one else's property to turn around using like a 10 point turn. I felt so unbelievably bad but it was that or backing out onto a busy road on a blind turn and I had visions of people driving into my trailer soooo I dunno I did what was safest and I hope they don't mind! I can imagine it happens frequently on that little road. 

I did finally make it into the barn and parked and still had plenty of time to get TC ready and calm myself down a bit. TC thought my adrenaline meant that we were going to have a LOT of fun and he was super amped and ready to go. Luckily I could sit and relax for five minutes and then clicker train relaxation out of TC and we were good to go. 

When TC was quiet, we went over to sign releases and meet Jec! We began the lesson out in this big field she has and it was SO FUN to ride in a giant field again. I rode TC in the field when he was a baby and it was such a blast. TC just loves being in the open and has historically been much safer/quieter to ride in the open vs in the arena. Not sure what his deal is but I appreciate that he's like this. Honestly though, and I'll talk about this a lot, Jec and her property are very calming. TC was a really good boy throughout the lesson. 

She watched him walk around a bit and listened to me talk about what we needed and had us start with some walk poles. The idea was to keep TC's neck long and his stride short (oh wow, that sounds just like Tracey's lesson) so that he put as many footprints in between the poles as possible. At the end of the poles, we'd ride a turn on the forehand or a turn on the haunches (alternating exercises and directions) and walk back through the poles. 

Doing our homework!

After walking through the poles, we trotted around on some paths in the field and she got a good look at his natural way of going. TC thought trotting in the field was great and stretched all the way down. 

Our next exercise was trotting diagonally from the corner of one pole to the corner of the other pole (these corners were both raised probably 6-8 inches off the ground), slicing them, then coming around to the other set of poles and slicing them in the same way. We were to do this in a figure 8 pattern and after the poles, leg yield him away from my new inside leg. 

We started and it was very apparent that when trotting over poles, TC really struggled to keep himself straight without my help, which I refused to give him so that we could give him the opportunity to really learn from the exercise. Once he figured out the exercise though, his trot got so much better! Jec said that she likes this exercise because it really encourages them to shift their shoulder blades back, something that good jumpers do over fences. The difference it made in TC was pretty astounding and I honestly can't fully explain it. I haven't felt him trot like that... ever... though. So I'll be repeating the exercise every week for a while (although we are stuck in the indoor so I don't want to be intrusive, it might take a few weeks to actually do the exercise again). 

It was more of a normal looking
figure 8 lol my art skills aren't great

From there, we went into the arena for our last two exercises. Jec let us walk around on the rail for a bit, letting TC get used to it. But TC didn't really need it, as I said about the vibes

The first exercise was to ride a cloverleaf pattern over a square of poles. Basically go across the poles, then turn left and circle back to come down the poles, then turn left and circle back to come across the poles the other way, then turn left and circle back to come up the poles, and then circle back and get back where you were. 

We did it in both directions just at a trot and TC took out the poles several times. Jec said that what this exercise was going to do for him was give him feedback about his own balance. If he was in balance, he'd be able to trot through without knocking the poles. If he was not, he'd knock the poles. So once again I tried to let him figure it all out on his own. 

Jec started to throw more and more at us. We had to trot through the poles, walk four steps, then trot again. We had to halt just after the poles. We had to canter right after going through the poles and trot right before going back through them. We had to halt in the square. It got harder and harder, and with each new thing, TC would struggle at first and then get the hang of it. 

By the end, he was definitely the most balanced he's been without me being involved and certainly the most balanced I'd felt him with his neck that long. 

Either direction! Imagine them being more
circular though lol 

Our last exercise was to walk him forward over a pole so that the pole was under his midline, left legs on the left side and right legs on the right side. 

One thing to note about TC and Jec is that TC was slowly becoming more and more obsessed with her. I think it's because she wasn't using a microphone, so he could hear her talking and I think he really likes that, he seems to love being talked to. He also gets unreasonably drawn to some people, especially anyone who laughs at him. He was very enamored by Jec and when he climbed up on the poles and got her to laugh, I knew he was about to be a clown. He stood on the pole with one foot and then lifted his other foot up in his shoulder stretch as I was trying to push him sideways down to get off the pole and try again. 

We were not exactly successful at this but she thinks it will REALLY help him, so she wanted me to practice it every day. We've done it a few times and he gets it right at least once a ride, so that's good. He's still very dedicated to being a clown, so that'll be tough to break, but we'll get there! 

Standing over the pole

Jec had to run but let me continue riding if I wanted to, I did a few changes and some half pass just to get some miles at other barns for generalization purposes. Then I headed out and did not have any trouble getting home! 

Overall I thought it was a fabulous lesson. It was very different than what we're used to and I was glad to have the change. 

I think I'll head back over to Jec's barn next month and see if she thinks he's improved. Having cavalletti lessons every month sounds like a really good addition to our program! Inspires me to continue doing cavalletti every week (or twice a week but it's tough because I have to move poles around every time) and it'll keep us on task working on exercises that actually help him vs mindlessly trotting through poles, which is what I have been doing.

Cavalletti Sunday #1

At our epic blogger meetup a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about cavalletti exercises. L said that she tends to do a lot of pole work on Sundays when she's the only one at her barn, and I like setting up something on weekends too when I actually have time. We all talked about sharing exercises in a google doc and setting up Cavalletti Sundays (and actually they can be done any day since Kate really needs days off), where we all ride the same exercise and then talk about it.

L found three really cool exercises for this last weekend because she's an overachiever. I need to get on this shit. Two of them were going to be tricky with the number of poles I have access to in the covered (not many) and the length of the arena (not long), so I chose the cloverleaf pattern. Just four poles making up a square.

The bottom one

I a little bit forgot about Cavalletti Sunday until partway through my ride, so the ride started with some STELLAR lateral work from the genius horse. Not only have we totally fixed our leg yield problem in a matter of days, he is also giving me really solid shoulder-in and haunches-in at the walk. I think this walk lateral work warm up is here to stay as long as I have time (I often do not on weekdays). I've felt like we were stalling this winter working on the basics, but we really aren't.

We went into trot and he immediately felt really good in the contact- very much pressed into the bridle and lifting through his back. After doing just a lot of figures in trot, I suddenly remembered cavallettis and paused our warm up to put them out. I put them on a square 18 feet apart. I wasn't planning on cantering over the poles so I kind of didn't care how far apart they were. The poles were different lengths so I kind of had to wing it. It all worked out in the end.

Back on, and I decided to use the square as a marker for a circle, trying to stay the same distance away from each corner of the square. We did a bunch of trot-canter transitions on the circle, adding to our practice of the transitions the day before by incorporating the need to stay on the same circle the whole time. It was surprisingly difficult, though once as I started correcting for the future steps vs correcting the current steps, it got a lot easier.

After the ride

The big thing I noticed in the canter was that it felt REALLY good when he was downright heavy in the bridle. He has learned to press pretty heavily into the contact at the trot. And interjection- when I say heavy, I don't mean heavy heavy, this is a very light horse. But we're just missing something at the canter. I feel like he has the potential to have a ton of impulsion, but when I add the power he loses throughness. So we've been focusing on throughness, while of course maintaining his natural impulsion and quality of the gaits (no loss of suspension/four beat canter here), but not asking him to really strike off the ground and carry himself like he needs to in the future.

So I focused on clamping my leg on a bit more and getting him to really push into contact. It wasn't magic for impulsion, but it made him feel a thousand times more with me through his whole body, something I feel in the trot and something that I require in trot before asking him to start pushing with the hind end more than he is comfortable. Ah. So my next big steps in canter are to replicate the really good feeling of him grabbing the bit and me putting my leg on to bring his back up even more. Then we'll add power and I'll probably have to grow bigger balls.

I also took him and backed him through this contraption
because backing is tricky on him

After the canter, we did the actual cavalletti exercise. I kind of thought that it'd be an easy fun thing to do for us. Focus on getting him more miles of trotting in the good connection we've been working on, but give him something to do while he does it. Oh no. The geometry at first was tough, and having to go from small circle to straight line to small circle was a recipe for loss of throughness. By the second small circle, I had lost him and we only had a little bit to go before we were on a straight line! When I lost the throughness, the poles tended to get in his way. This is relating to him probably not tracking up, so he'd step over okay in the front end and then step on the pole behind.

Things got much better as I got more involved and helped him stay a bit better through. By the end it was riding really smoothly. But for an exercise I thought would be easy... it was not. I guess it was easy enough in that I did it, but I've got higher standards than just getting through it!

We are definitely going to be doing more of this, possibly more than once a week. I think the poles are a really good check for us on a number of things on my list.

You can see my canter circle

At the end of the ride, we wandered around the ranch and I found out that there has been a lady at my barn who has been FEEDING TC GRAIN EVERY DAY. Like this woman has said maybe two words to me, but she told my friend that TC was so sweet and cute that she couldn't help but to give him some grain. I guess she finally realized it was a bad thing when TC saw her while I was on him and started misbehaving (I remember this incident and it wasn't her, but dude that's when you think that it might not be a good thing you're doing?). My friend apparently ripped her a new one, which I really appreciate, so I think that this behavior has stopped. But I'm still pretty pissed off.

What if he had a food allergy? What if he had EPSM or another metabolic disorder? What if he colicked? What if he needed the vet out? What if he needed surgery? What if he died? I know I'm dramatic but STILL this horse is actually worth enough now where I could not afford to replace him.

I'm doing several things to fix this:
1) I'm putting up passive aggressive signs all over TC's stall telling people not to feed him
2) I'm emailing my barn owner even just to have my complaint in writing
3) I'm writing her a note (I rarely see her since she rides at like 10-11am) telling her that this is completely unacceptable and asking her to give me a detailed account of what kind of food she had been feeding him and when she fed it to him.
4) I'm printing off an article or two about equine nutrition to leave in her trunk along with the note. I'd hope that people who owned horses would understand that you can't just willy nilly add grain to a strange horse's diet without a care in the world, but she for sure needs some more education on this subject.

So we'll see how all that goes. I'm pretty livid, but I'm also obviously glad that the behavior seems to have stopped and that TC at least seems no worse for wear. I will be monitoring him closely to see if there are any behavior or weight changes in the next few weeks.

Inadvertent Dressage Training

Yesterday I did my very first handstand push up! It was kipping and against the wall and I was on three abmats but who cares. Handstands are fun!

Except when horses do them (no handstands were performed in the making of this post).

Instead of riding in the ring on Wednesday, Ali and I hit the trail. It was about ten million degrees, so when we got there, we and the entire property promptly burst into flames. We managed to still ride our normal short loop (which isn't that short, it takes about an hour).

TC was excellent except that as we work harder on straightness at home, I begin to notice it more on the trails. He likes to randomly lean against my legs laterally when he gets tired. Like he basically just falls sideways while I hold him up with my leg. Boy is that getting old now that I notice it! So I'd kick him off the leg he was falling on and he'd promptly fall to the other one.

Enjoy these pictures from the trail ride! Except this one, it's
from the open space where I sit to wait for traffic to die down
after work (and most of my thesis has been written there)

So today when I got on, I wanted to focus on getting him to step off my left leg and connect better on the right side. However, I was warned that there was an obstacle course in the arena for the camp kids (who have a horse show today so as I was leaving, they were decorating their horses and omg so cute, none of them quite reached the excellence that is Bobby's outfits though).

We got into the arena and I realized that working on bending wasn't going to be easy. The arena (which is a little wider than a short dressage court) was filled with stuff. There was a barrel pattern in one corner (not regulation size), bending poles, four poles (which I later noticed were about 9' apart), and randomly placed poles and cones EVERYWHERE.

When we walked in, TC was bug-eyed but in a good way. All he wanted to do was touch and play with everything. He knocked over a bending pole, picked up a barrel and shook it, then put it down and made it sproing (it has a spring in it), insisted at stopping at every cone to touch it...

We managed to do some of the bending work in the walk and trot, and did get some good moments, but I ended up giving up on trying to work on this amidst all the stuff. But we were only fifteen minutes into our ride and I didn't want to leave just yet. I had no idea what to do though, there was no room to circle, leg yield, etc. I could have done lengthenings but he was so focused on all the stuff that it was a little hard to get him to relax.

He loves looking out on the valley

I decided to trot him through the canter poles just to get him lifting his shoulder a little bit more. He thought that was really fun and was enthusiastically looking for other poles after he finished those. I noticed that they were about two trot steps apart, which is when I realized they were set like canter poles (the kids are all beginners so I'm sure this wasn't planned out for them- they don't canter yet).

Then I got a ridiculous idea.

TC has never cantered over anything in his life. He's trotted 18" logs and has landed in canter, but never ever cantered over anything.

So obviously the first time he should canter over something should be four canter poles, right? But my brain didn't get that far until after the ride.

I was walking down the long side and none of that went through my mind, the only thing I kind of connected was poles = set for canter therefore horse = should canter poles. Very simple thoughts. So simple that I stuck my outside leg back and cantered over to the poles.

HOLD ON. Did my four year old just do a walk to canter transition!?!?! Yes he did, and he did them in both directions after that! Whaaat?

So pretty

Okay back to the poles.

I helped him out with the distance, moving him up so he could make the strides and he just... went. It wasn't a big deal to him at all but I could tell that he thought this was AWESOME. We came around the other side and I did the same thing, helping him find his spot. After that, I let him figure it out. He messed up twice, once getting in too small and once getting the wrong distance. After that, he nailed every single distance with me just keeping his canter regulated (he wanted to get there faster because poles are fun!).

After a few times, he thought he was the SHIT. I mean, his travel bff (Ali's horse) was in the arena and HE wasn't cool enough to canter through poles. And TC, well he cantered over poles which is pretty freaking special.

After the poles, we came back to trot (and I had to keep a hold on my outside rein so he wouldn't drag me over to the poles again). With his new found confidence, he was SO easy to ride. Super steady in the bridle, easy to maneuver off my left leg... huh.

Ugh love this place (wish it was green though)

I was so happy with him. I'm trying to have more fun with him and get myself out of my old habits of work work work work, which I developed when I had Rico going at the FEI levels.

And it really pays off workwise too.

When he has fun and thinks he's amazing, he is a lot more receptive to what I want him to do. And if I hadn't tried the poles, I wouldn't have inadvertently installed a walk to canter transition on him. It's not pretty (a bit off the bit and kind of boingy instead of striking off properly), but it will help him understand the trot canter better and help with him learning to coil up a bit in walk and in canter.

Such great views from up there

This weekend I'm off to the El Dorado County Fair with brother and SIL. I've never been. So that should be fun! And I get to hang out with my brother's soon-to-be-in-laws, who I've only met once.

Speaking of brother and SIL, I  got some fun news! I'm going to be a bridesmaid in their wedding! But it's not until October 2016 so I have to wait, boo.

What the actual fuck?