Return of the Rogue Left Hand

Every year my horse tries to turn into an appaloosa.

My little appaloosa

Ignore the ill-fitting halter...

Fixed the halter... 

He's always been pretty dapple-y but this year is craziness! He has them everywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if he started to shit dapple-y manure.

This week is spring break! And I started off the week by visiting my brother, his girlfriend, and my best friend in southern California before coming back to a big dose of ego deflation at my lesson with Tracey this Tuesday night.

Ego deflation made better by pretty pictures

I've spoken before about my issues with my own perception under saddle. I sit what I assume is perfectly straight in the tack at each lesson while my trainer violently cringes at my crookedness. The stupidest part of all is that despite having access to mirrors, I cannot see my crookedness.

That's what you want in a trainer, eh?

But I have no problem seeing crookedness in my students. I can see someone sitting crooked from a mile away, but myself? Nothing.

Good thing I have my own trainer!

The lesson wasn't great. I mean it was great because Tracey knows all but it wasn't great because I almost cried like six times. Part of that is left over from midterms, part of it is the stress from last weekend, part of it is because of a few other minor personal issues that arose earlier in the day. But most of it is because I was having a minor tantrum.

Lucky horse 

Remember my issue with pulling on the left rein? If you don't, let me brief you: I pull on the left rein like it's the rope tied around my family keeping them from plunging to their deaths. I pull on the left rein like I'm trying to start a chainsaw. I pull on the left rein like I'm drawing my hand back to punch someone in the face.

I have myself completely deluded into thinking that Rico is heavy on the left rein and that pulling is the answer. Lately he's been heavier. Interesting that he's heavier the more I stress. And the more I stress the more I pull... Totally unrelated. Not.

Tracey scolded me for hanging on the curb rein at the beginning of the lesson. I dropped it a bit and felt the heaviness on the snaffle. Ugh. I complained. Tracey gave me a list of reasons why he's feeling heavy and we began plugging away. First, I ride him too much behind the vertical. Second, his neck gets short. Third, I PULL ON THE FUCKING REINS ALL THE TIME LIKE MY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.

At least the barn I board at is beautiful?

After fixing the first two, we began on the third. Don't pull on the left rein, Megan, don't do it.

I struggled a LOT and we stopped. We evaluated why I pull on the rein. I pull because I feel like I need to. I pull because he's heavy on that rein and I need to *soften* him. I pull because he isn't bending.

News flash: none of those reasons are real but Tracey was more delicate than I would have been.

Tracey asked me to uberstreichen. Basically let go of the left rein. Pfft, I thought, he's going to fall on his face if I do that, he's going to counter bend, he's going to come off the bit.

He stayed in balance. He stayed uphill. He lightened. He stayed bending. All that happened was that I felt his little brain sigh in relief as his stupid rider finally got her head out of her ass and rode properly for once.

DAMNIT! Like I said, my ego is pretty badly bruised.

He isn't totally perfect... I mean he does paw occasionally

"Why do you pull on the left rein?" and I had no answers. I don't know why I pull on that rein.

I'm not going to pull on it anymore. Rico approves.

Rico also approves of fresh shavings

And naps!

Today I have an ENTIRE day off for the first time in a long long time. I plan on reading, running if it stops raining, cleaning all my tack, and riding my awesome horse. 

Test Riding

The last couple days have been pretty great for Rico and I! Spring break has given me a lot more time to spend with him and that has paid off quite a bit. Break has also given me a lot of time to take pictures and the good ones will be randomly placed to distract from the walls of text about my horse!

My favorite tree

On Tuesday I was feeling a bit down since I felt like Rico and I were working SO hard and had little to show for it. The past couple of days he wasn't very well balanced at the canter and I couldn't get him to do any lateral work without a fight. We ended on a good note, but I was still a bit frustrated that all of this work has boiled down to a LESS rideable horse. I was just frustrated with my lack of ability to ride him consistently to Tracey's standard.

Dandy pony at dusk

I was also frustrated because I WANT TO SHOW! Here I finally have a SOUND horse who is working well at fourth level (well, he is now, read on) and I haven't been able to show this year yet. So my frustration with our failure on Tuesday coupled with my desire to show made me really anxious to fix all of these problems before my lesson on Saturday so that Tracey and I can come up with a plan to get us to some SHOWS!

One of the many informative signs in the forest

With this in mind, yesterday I decided that I was going to slap on the double and my big spurs, and attack 4-2 like there was no tomorrow. There's no reason why he shouldn't be able to do this test in his sleep, minus the right pirouette, which I need to accept a 4 on and stop stressing. I braced myself for a terrible ride but....

I had so much fun photographing this fire

IT WAS AMAZING! Upon riding the test, I realized that he is a THOUSAND times more rideable in the trot, I can easily keep him with me and the counter change of hand was perfect. Before it felt like I was being pulled around the entire test and that the movements came so fast that I couldn't really control him. Now it feels like we are staying together and the movements feel much slower. I feel like I could literally take that trot work into the Grand Prix ring.

I love this bridge

The left pirouette was pretty good! It was made better when I softened my hand forward so that he could stretch his neck down a bit. I want to work with this with Tracey on Saturday. The right pirouette is a shit show, made worse by my lack of coordination to the right. He seems so capable, so I'm hoping Tracey has a magical exercise that makes it perfect. But honestly, everything else was so PERFECT it seems a shame to not show this test because of ONE movement that isn't perfect. So Yarra Yarra, HERE WE COME!

A heavily edited Dandy pony

The high from yesterday made me nervous to get on him today. I decided that I was going to stick with the easy work (especially since he worked hard the day before, but also because I had to get to work). I did some transitions, working specifically on the canter to trot transition until it was perfect. I refuse to lose points on easy movements (since my right pirouette, tempis, and trot extensions are going to screw me over), so we drilled it until it was absolutely perfect! Such a good pony. So good that I took a chance and tried a counter change of hand at the canter. I'm not sure why I chose to ruin a perfectly good ride with a PSG movement. But OH MY GOD MY HORSE IS AMAZING! He literally did the movement better than I've felt on ANY horse, let alone the horse that used to gallop away in the zig zags.

Woodside forests

So this is me, eating my words about how I didn't think we were on the right track. Turns out that the work I'm doing IS paying off, and that I just need to do a bit of test riding to make sure that the movements are still good.

Overall I'm super pleased with my wonderful animal :)

My house is so weird

On manual focus!

The barn at dusk

THIS DOG

Fire

The gate lamp (arena in the background)

Such an excited dog

I love my camera!

Dandy at dusk