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. 

A Great Ride

I had probably the best ride of our rehab so far yesterday so I wanted to document it! 

For context, the last three rides looked like this:

Thursday 12/18 - I posted about that in my last post

Friday 12/19 - We went on a trail ride for about an hour. He was really good and didn't have any spooking/balking. I did some lateral work on the hills, specifically working on strengthening his left hind leg. 

Saturday 12/20 - We had an okay ride, I was glad to get some video and I really noticed that he seemed plenty forward when watching him, but I know he felt behind my leg. He had a couple of small hesitations (I wouldn't even call them balks) but outside of that he was compliant. At the end of our ride, I finally got annoyed and really hustled him along, and then we ended on a good note. But in the video he was 

THEN I took him on the tracks and he seemed perky, so I let him pick up the trot on the back lane (a long, wide, slightly uphill section that spans almost the entire length of the property behind the pastures) and then had the idea that maybe I could let him canter out there. He picked up canter really easily and loped up the hill until he got a little tired. 

Our last day on the trails for a while, bummer!

I figured that we should do the other lead, so I walked him back down to the bottom of the back lane and then asked him to canter again. This time he really went for it, so I got up in half seat and let him go. He was gaining speed though, and I'm like... pretty aware that my vet called him borderline neuro last time we went to see him, so I asked TC to maybe keep it contained. TC took that as an invitation to leap into the air, so then I kicked him forward and decided that I'd just lean back a bit just in case! 

Finally we were getting to the normal spot where he poops out, so I sat back and was anticipating him stopping. He did not stop, he again took that as a cue to leap even HIGHER into the air and I almost came off. I was hanging off the right side of him and somehow managed to yell "well, don't lose me!?!" and he scooped me back up. I then made him continue cantering all the way up the steeper part of the hill when he finally stopped.

It did kind of scare me though, so I forced the poor horse back down the back lane to do it AGAIN, and this time we did a very controlled, easy canter for maybe eighteen strides before I let him walk and cool out. Looking back, it was super fun! Fun to feel him so enthusiastic about moving forward. 

Sunday 12/21 - I gave him and myself the day off, he was locked in for the day because of the rain, but was then let back out on Monday morning. 

He's such a good trail horse

So then yesterday I drove down to the ranch over my lunch break, and I was glad to see that my arena was useable! I dragged it and then went to get TC out.

I started to target train his right hind leg - I want to ask him to step toward the target, specifically taking a step away from his body with his right hind and aiming to touch his gaskin with the target. He didn't really understand it at first, but we did get some good movement. I think it'll take a few days. This is mostly because his right hind is stuffed up under his body ALL the time, even in the cross ties. And as he's (slowly) putting on muscle, I'm noticing that his right hind is lacking muscle just above the stifle in comparison to the left hind. Anyway, hopefully this can help him!

Love this spot looking down on the ranch!

We then started our ride by walking down the road, which I've been avoiding doing too much for his feet. He does love it though, and he got to see all his horse and cow friends. I tried to show him the new pig that the neighbor got but it was too far away and he was focusing on something else. 

Once in the arena, I had decided to be more structured with my ride. Using my interval timer, you'd think I'd be coordinated in general, but I haven't been. So for each of our eight 2 minute 15 second intervals (4 sets of 1 interval + 1 minute rest + 1 interval each and then he gets a longer break) I had a plan going into them. 

Set 1: Warm Up

I warmed TC up with large figures, working on establishing a connection and bend in each direction. We also worked a little bit on just being responsive to the aids. I didn't care if he maintained it or if he was just being a little more forward, just that he responded at all. He got lots of praise! I also asked him to very briefly canter in each direction for 3/4 of a large circle. Not caring if he was on the bit or anything, just wondering if that might loosen him up.

Set 2: Lateral Work + Lengthenings

On Saturday I had played with an exercise where we'd do some lateral work down the long sides of the arena and then we'd straighten, counter flex, and lengthen on the short sides. I figure that this will help him with his straightness, as well as give him confidence that when I ask him to go forward I'm not going to just chase him endlessly. And it works well with my plan to not ask him to do as hard of work when he's moving forward and to ask him to work a little harder if he's moving slower. 

Set 3: Shallow Loop + 15m Circles

For this exercise, I really wanted to test the connection and the coordination of his hind legs after priming him to be more aware of them from the second set. We did shallow loops down the longside and then every other loop, we'd ride a 15 meter circle at the top of the arena. It was a good way for me to really focus on the way that he used his hind legs and not to just shove them around, and it was good to see how he used himself on the 15 meter circle too. We also did a couple of long diagonals in a lengthened trot, since he was starting to kind of feel himself during this exercise and he seemed to think those were fun!

Such a fun day

Set 4: 10-10-10 Canter Trot Transitions

I decided to take a bit of a risk and do more cantering this ride. In the past, the canter was a source of a lot of balking. About half the time I asked last year, he'd either buck in place, run sideways, kick at my leg, or just stop and stick his head straight up in the air. So throughout this rehab, I've avoided cantering him too much. 

However, one of his favorite exercises (and mine too) was this 10-10-10 exercise I love for unresponsive horses. You trot for 10 strides, then canter for 10 strides, then trot for 10 strides, and so on. The goal is to get EXACTLY ten strides, no more no less. With Rico, and TC in the past, I'd then start to lower the numbers, so trot for 9 strides, canter for 9 strides, and so on. Rico was able to do this at like 2-3 strides, which is CRAZY to think about now! TC would consistently be able to do maybe 6? I forget to be honest. 

He super lit up in this exercise, and so did I. I actually had to half halt him at the trot, and sometimes he'd even slip into canter early. To the right, we were dead on accurate, but to the left he was a little reluctant to do all 10 canter strides. I made it a rule not to get after him about that, just to bring him to trot and start the counting again. 

I didn't have him do this the entire 2 minutes 15 seconds in each direction, I ended up doing maybe 3-4 of them and then keeping him in trot, mostly just working on large figures and enjoying how forward he was (and praising him for it!). 

The ranch is so casually beautiful

It was the best ride we've had in SO long! I felt like we could really work on things the two of us together rather than it being me against him trying to convince him to be forward and him trying to convince me to not make him be forward. 

The best part was how much he seemed to enjoy it too. Not just the last set, but the entire time he seemed really mentally engaged with the work. I can't remember when he was last like that with dressage work. During our foray into jumping last winter, I felt like I had that back, but then things got bad again. Hopefully this can be maintained through the winter and into next year! 

TC got to meet the neighbor's new pig after our
ride and he was SO excited (he actually scared
the pig at first by charging up to it)

I'll ride him again today and hopefully we can replicate some of this good work. And then Christmas Eve I'm planning on doing some groundwork in the barn (maybe targeting his butt cheeks again) since it will be raining all day. And Christmas Day I'm at my aunts' house all day which is convenient because it's going to rain all day again. I think it's alright if he gets a couple of days off after all of that work! 

My plan is to still get his neck injected and maybe talk to the vet about how he uses his right hind. I'm kind of thinking that an SI injection might not be a bad idea? I want to figure out how many joints is possible with what is leftover after the initial injections last month and prioritize them. We can always pull more blood but again I'm trying to take this slow! 

Slowing Down + Adding Lateral Work

TC has been pretty good this week! I'm still kind of experimenting with things to get us on the same page. After watching the last video I took (trying to take them every week), I noticed that when I thought he was forward enough, he was borderline running past his balance. 

He's always looked different than he feels to ride, which has been a struggle for me in the past (and now!). He looks more forward, more active, more responsive than he feels, and I've had instructors tell me to slow down when he feels like he's barely moving. 

I know a lot of this comes down to responsiveness, and in the past I've basically just added tension to get that responsiveness, and I'd rather not do that this time around.

TC likes to stop to say hi to Rico

Another big part of why I want to run him off his feet is the balking. The big thing I'm looking to feel is a commitment to moving forward without having the feeling that in the back of his mind he's waiting to stop. One way I was able to combat this when riding him before was to run him off balance so that it was harder for him to stop, then he felt like he was forward! Because he couldn't not be forward. But that was not conducive to collection and that's where things started to get really hard for us. 

And I think this is really making the balking worse because he is probably uncomfortable being that off balance, so he wants to slow down to catch his balance, and then I say no I need you to be forward. It's also not fully accepting the aids if the horse literally has no choice but to do the thing. Like if you slap a horse in draw reins, is he actually accepting the aids? Or is there no other choice? I need to give him the chance to balk in order to fix the balking. 

His neck looks great!

So in my recent rides, I've been challenging myself to ride slower. At the walk, I've been playing with some lateral work, asking him to take slow, deliberate steps. My goal is to make the steps more active, but for now I'm not working on that so much. We do straighten and march forward, but in the actual lateral work, I'm not hurrying him. 

Then in the trot, we trot slowly, but we trot slowly and we do harder work, like some lateral work or smaller circles. Then we straighten and we go more forward and he gets a LOT of praise. And then we slow down again (my choice) and he has to work harder, not super hard, just a little harder. 

In my last ride (yesterday), it did seem to help a bit? He definitely got to a more rideable place a little faster than usual, although I did ride earlier in the day. We were able to do a few fun exercises. The first was to do haunches-in at the trot to the right, I'm really working to get him comfortable bringing his right hind away from his body and to engage his left hind and he gave me some really good steps! Nothing too fancy or carrying, just mechanically good steps. And then to the left, we worked on some shoulder-in to renvers (again just like, the smallest amount of angle) and that was great. 

Rico did come over, TC was more
excited than he was though lol

As things got better in the ride, we did a little lateral work down the long side in a slower trot, then on the short sides, I'd counter bend him (not too much, just enough where his body was straighter than the line he was on) and ask him to lengthen his stride a little bit. 

We DID have two balks though. One was tracking left during a walk to trot transition, this was a really popular balking moment for him in the past, so it was not unexpected. I've been really fair (I think) about asking him to trot. I first ask with my leg + voice, then wait, if he doesn't trot, I ask again with my leg + voice and wait. Then if I have to ask a third time, that's when I escalate with my tiny spurs until he goes. 

When I do escalate, I make sure that he's MOVING but then I half halt back to the trot that I had wanted in the first place (vs continuing to chase him) - essentially he has to work much harder to get to the trot I was asking for than he would have had to if he'd just picked up trot. That time to the left, I got to the second ask and I felt him suck back. So that's the start of the balk, not just him ignoring me or taking his sweet time trotting. But once I escalated, he got moving pretty quickly after it, so not a bad balk like before! 

The lighting was weird, but TC is so
cute with him

The second one was during trot in another classic area. To the right in this one corner of the arena, we turn to go "uphill" and by uphill, I mean that my arena is a 1% grade, it's not actually truly uphill. This is a place where he likes to stall out and start hover trotting, so as we came around the corner, I asked him to please move a bit more forward. Instead, he threw himself through his right shoulder and darted inward, and when I put my leg on, he sucked back and went more sideways. This is pretty classic setup for a balk for him - I ask for forward, he contorts his body and then becomes ANGRY with me for expecting him to go forward from such a crooked place. But if I block him from becoming crooked, he balks really hard (head straight up, refusing to take a step forward) and becomes ANGRY with me for blocking him because obviously he's really just trying to go forward and needs to shift his weight to do so. 

For that one, again I escalated and then he was totally fine. I do think the spurs are a much better choice than the whip. I wish I'd switched a while ago. The whip sometimes would cause him to buck and that's something he can do... while balking. So I think I'm going to keep the spurs and just carry the whip for lighter aids like asking him to remember that he has hind legs. 

This is what I feel like at work AND
with TC right now lol

I was a little disappointed with the balking (although it really wasn't bad), and of course I considered overthinking it. But I did make a conscious decision to ride him slower and put him at risk of balking. I do think that's the right call. My hope is to give him confidence that I'm not going to run him past his balance, and to get me recalibrated to develop the feeling of forward from a more appropriate stride length. And unfortunately there will be times where his muscle memory takes over. 

And maybe there IS pain there, I will be scheduling him for injections again in February and we'll do the last things on our laundry list. But so far I feel comfortable pushing him a little bit up until that appointment (which is only like, three and a half weeks of riding since I'll be gone for a lot of January - and at least one of those weeks it will be pouring rain so it's pretty minimal work) to find out whether we can get through this. 

But by the end of the ride, he felt great. He was happily pretty forward (for him), we ended on a fabulous note of him doing some lateral work with me being able to actually half halt him to rebalance him, and he was super pleased at the end of the ride with his ears forward and happily marching out on the tracks to go home. 

Rewriting the Circle of Aids

Without a trainer, I've been just kind of going through my own basics and filling in some holes that were left after the last year of riding TC in a way I wasn't a fan of. Try to get back to my own roots and theories in training rather than immediately jumping on board with another trainer. The right situation will present itself, I'm sure. 

Coming along well

I've been focusing as much as possible on the circle of aids and how each interact with him and with one another, trying to kind of rewrite the basics on this horse back to what they were like when we started working together. At the beginning, I had this really idealized way I was riding him from my leg to my hand and having him very sensitive to my seat. Somewhere along the line, I was told to add a lot of negative tension to him to get the power necessary for big scores and we lost a lot of the subtlety in our aid system. I really haven't loved the way he was going since 2019. 

I told myself it was just because he was an off breed or whatever, he isn't going to ever look like a horse worth 10x as much. But at the end of the day, if I don't like the way he is going, I don't like the way he is going. And if that's the way he needs to go to be able to do the higher levels, I don't want to do the higher levels on him then. I think I can change things for us though. I think it's possible to train him to the upper levels in a way that doesn't make me cringe when I see video or pictures. 

I'm so happy having his neck back! It's been a while

So, the circle of aids. I teach it pretty aggressively to my students. The leg signals to the hind legs to generate power which travels through the horse's back and is regulated by the seat and received by the hand. The aids have to be in balance with one another and therefore the horse must be responsive to each in the correct way. Not enough leg and there's not enough energy flowing through the system. Not enough seat and the energy doesn't recycle and instead dumps too much into the bridle, causing a horse like TC to retract the neck (or others to lean into the contact). Backwards thinking hands crumple the neck but not enough contact and the energy doesn't recycle effectively so the horse gets strung out. 

TC is responsive to the leg (connecting leg aid = upper calf, energizing leg aid = spur/heel/bump with my ankle) and he follows the hand well when the circle of aids are working. But the seat needed some help, so we did a lot of transitions from the walk to the halt and from the halt to the walk, then also some work from walk to trot from the seat alone to help him understand that the rhythm needed to be determined by my seat, not by speed or energy. A lot of the time he seems to lose balance from walk to trot, picking up the trot as a way to rebalance himself, so we're doing a lot of those transitions to reshape them. 

What a good boy

But then the actual connecting of the hind legs to the hand, that doesn't just happen by hammering the leg on because sending too much power through a back that is not supple is just going to cause tension and that's no good. The back has to be like a hose, not kinked either due to tension or due to crookedness. 

This is where I go to the Xs I wrote about a while back. Connecting the left leg to the right rein and the right leg to the left rein using some suppling exercises like spiraling in and out, shallow leg yields, and shoulder-fore to unkink the hose and allow energy through. The diagonal movement across his body of the energy prevents him from tightening his back and therefore I'm pretty much guaranteed that he steps through to the outside rein... as long as the outside thigh works properly to bring his shoulder around. 

It sometimes does and sometimes does not, so when it doesn't, that's when we shift gears to the shoulder-fore or shoulder-in. Spiraling out and then transitioning to shoulder-fore down the long side, then spiraling in and out on the opposite side of the arena and rinse, repeat. 

Actually lifting the base of his neck and
keeping his chest plate up, phew

At the trot, once I find the lateral suppleness, the circle of aids is not too hard to find. I've been on my own case to keep my leg aids different from one another. Upper calf stays on almost all the time to direct the energy, but bumping with my ankle or touching with my whip can generate more energy. Honestly, he doesn't need a lot of energy generation when the pathway for it is so clear and there's no blockage from my seat or hand. 

The seat regulates the energy, it controls how much gets sent to my hand to create enough reach in the bridle to prevent tightness in the back while recycling the rest of it to the hind legs to create engagement and eventually collection. Send too much energy to the hand and he's going to lose balance. Send too little and he's going to retract and then tighten his back and dump his shoulders down. Try to recycle too much to the hind legs and he'll stall out because he's not strong enough. Not enough and oh, a First level horse. The seat aids have  to... work... though. And that's what we worked on earlier last week because again, we lost a lot of subtlety with the aid system, namely the seat. So we did a lot of transitions and now I can regulate the energy much easier. 

Then the hand. I ask myself a lot of questions to make sure we are on the right path. Who is making the weight in the reins, me or him? If I push my hand slightly forward, does he reach without losing his vertical chest plate? If someone came along and cut my reins, would I have a momentary loss of balance? The hand is the toughest thing for me, TC is so light and feels better in the contact when he's leaning on me than when he's not. So I have to check on it a lot. 

Love this posture

Canter is a bit different. There's just something about his canter that makes me want to take my leg off and pull on his face. That's unhelpful. I realized that somewhat early last week and took a walk break and tried to dissect it. I finally came to the conclusion that I had no idea why I wanted to do that (the only answer I had was "he might... do something bad? But probably not?"), so I was just going to force myself to ride the canter properly, get my leg on, seat bones plugged in and emphasizing the backswing, and push my hand forward. And wouldn't you know it, he went better. Sometimes trusting the feel works and sometimes you just have to ignore it and ride better even if your instinct is that something bad will happen if you do? Dressage is hard.  

The canter is TOUGH to ride like that though, but it feels and looks fabulous. I think it's hard for him too because he drops out from under me sometimes, so we've had to feed more energy through the circle of aids. He also is more likely to retract the neck in canter, so I've had to really focus on my bear down to press his neck forward into my hand. 

The Xs are hard to find in the canter because of the nature of the gait, so the suppleness lacks at canter and he is able to get his neck back at me quite easily, even when I feel like the circle of aids is mostly okay. So we've been doing a lot of haunches-in and some shoulder-fore in canter to try to find a better connection and more lateral suppleness. 

Split behind definitely getting better

So then with this circle of aids now being better, it's about building strength to hold it through movements. Realizing that a lot of our movements are ridden front to back is frustrating, given how much I've spent on lessons in the past. But whatever. 

TC tends to lose balance in his lateral work and press his chest plate down and then I have to take back on the reins to hold him back (and that's only obvious when I force my hand forward and find that he won't seek contact and instead speeds up), so we've been doing a lot of walk-trot and trot-walk transitions in shoulder-in. Once the shoulder-in is good, I'll do the same in haunches-in and then we'll start fixing the half passes. No wondering why he can't bend in those anymore. 

The canter work is surprisingly decent in the new posture, I think because I'm inherently a better canter rider and I find that it's more obvious to me when he drops his shoulders in the canter because it becomes really hard to ride. We are mostly doing some haunches-in at the canter, as I said above, to both find the Xs and to help to increase the collection. 

Welcome back, neck muscles, it's been a while

So that's our focus for right now. Try to fix our aid system. Try to fix the connection. Start rebuilding strength in the collection. I also need to get myself together with my biomechanics as well because that is going downhill quickly without mirrors or help. 

We'll figure out a training situation soon enough. But I'm really happy with the work we are doing now. He's a totally different horse since we moved and took a break from instruction. So we'll run with this until I figure out what to do next. 

Today he sees the chirovet because he had some weird clicking in his jaw while eating last week that I wanted her to look at. I also want to talk to her about what my vet found in Feb. Hopefully we can help him balance out his hind end a bit more. And I'll be curious to hear what she thinks of him now that he's put on a bit more muscle and is actually going properly! 

A Lesson on Lateral Work

On Wednesday, I had a lesson for the first time in about six weeks! Tracey comes out to my barn every other week and it's been nice to have someone to work with on a more regular basis while I figure out a long term training solution (or maybe this is it? who knows). 

This lesson was a bit different because TC is on a strict fitness schedule to slowly bring him back into work without stressing his respiratory system. Tracey, always the voice of reason, told me that I was being very conservative because TC's breathing didn't seem to change between his work and his rest sets. That's exactly what I wanted though, to not stress his system at ALL until he's back in full work. I'd just rather go slow than pay my vet another couple hundred dollars to look at his lungs and tell me to give him time off again.

So poor Tracey had to keep stopping and starting exercises as I'd trot for exactly 1.5 minutes and then immediately walk for 3 minutes and so on. Eight sets (he moves to ten on Sunday, then we go to 2 minute sets and so on). 

But it was really good! 

Excited to see Tracey because the horse lives for
people watching him do his job

The primary focus was on two things: 1) get TC more energetic on a shorter step and 2) a refresher for me on how to ride shoulder-in and haunches-in properly. 

Generally Tracey has been the trainer that tells me to slow the hell down. She's told me this on every horse. I want to go fast, faster is better. I have a client going through this now who is like "but I can't get his hind legs unless I have him moving over the ground" and I'm like I KNOW RIGHT?? I FEEL THE SAME WAY. But it's true that TC, and my client's horse, need to understand how to keep the hind legs active and engaged without having to be ridden so much over the ground. Energy on a short step. It's necessary. 

TC gets himself rolled over his front legs with his shoulders pointing down and his front legs spending too much time behind vertical. Then the hind legs, which carry less weight in this posture, feel real active and fancy because he's not having to really dig in and use them. When I focus on making the steps shorter, he shuts down a bit because his weight shifts back and it's harder to keep the hind legs so active/keep him into the bridle. So I avoid doing this and basically run around without a half halt. 

Pivo didn't like the lighting so we didn't get much
usable video for that lesson

After telling me to slow the hell down, we played with the lateral work. This is the kind of lesson I wanted, drilling down into what is correct in the lateral work rather than a "more bend, less angle" type of instruction. That's fine when I'm prepping for a show and I just need to gain another point or two on each movement. But I do really want the lateral work to actually help him in his strength, not just be a trick he does. 

With all the more bend, less angle, I'd lost my alignment and he'd developed some bad habits in both movements. Woops. 

In shoulder-in, he had a tendency to just sneak his little neck in a bit more than usual. The angle was fine, but the neck was showing a small amount of folding at the base, meaning that the shoulder-in had eked toward being more like a leg yield. When I did finally get him aligned properly, he felt SO GOOD, like way more uphill in the shoulder-in and easier to half halt within it. 

My tendency in the shoulder-in was to not use enough outside thigh, which was related to the folding, I couldn't really keep him up into my outside rein effectively without the outside thigh being supportive. We played around with going straight and then transitioning to shoulder-in, focusing on the movement coming from my outside thigh rather than my inside leg. 

Tracey had to go get a chair and so TC was
confused as to where she went and why she wasn't
staring at him

Then in the haunches-in, he'd snuck his front outside foot outward toward the rail in order to manufacture more angle. When the outside front leg drifts off the line, it just becomes a leg yield, so we worked hard on getting his chest to point down the track properly. That made it very clear that he still struggles a lot with the haunches-in and that this is why we are having problems in the half pass. So that's some good homework for us. 

When we did the exercise of going from straight to haunches-in, it was VERY apparent that the way that I'd started to ask him for the haunches-in was to slide off to the outside and pull on my inside rein. Great. I had to really think hard about sitting to the inside and half halting on the outside rein when the outside front leg was in the air, which was really hard and kind of confusing to me. I look forward to asking my clients to do this so I can see it working from the ground. 

I told you it was mostly useless

That was basically all we got to because there's just not much you can do in such a weird lesson. But it was great! Since the lesson, I've been focusing on my biomechanics and wanting to not sacrifice my leg position to get lateral work either. He's such a stuck little thing laterally, so we've got a lot of this kind of work in our future to make sure that he's not faking the lateral work anymore. We're getting away with it for now with solid scores, but the score is only a small part of what the lateral work is for. I need to be able to really load those hind legs with the lateral work to start developing better collection. If there's anything holding us back from the upper levels right now, it's the collection. 

Semi-Conductor

Last Thursday, I had another lesson! I’m really loving all these lessons, I feel like I’ve nearly figured out why things have been so iffy this year.

First, Tanya helped me out with the Pixem. I believe I have it working well enough to take a remote lesson *when* I figure out how to get audio to me while I’m on the horse. Bluetooth headphones decided not to work, so I need to figure out something else. In the mean time, my SO has agreed to be my ground crew for any technical difficulties and he'll let me use his phone for the audio. So thanks to him and to Tanya for helping me out!

Screenshots from my lesson! 

When we got started, I told Tanya that I’d changed three things since our last lesson: TC got his saddle reflocked, he got his bit changed, and I started him on LMF Gold. She liked these changes, saying that he was much more forward than he had been and approved the bit. So we’ll potentially be buying a NS turtle top soon.

I talked to her a bunch about the conductor theory, that I just hoist him along too much at home and that I’m trying to fix that. She barely had to tell me to get him in front of my leg, having to actually tell me to slow down and rebalance a few times! At one point she had me really half halt him in trot and he sat right down and gave me that fancy floaty trot, which she got really excited about.

We played in canter with the half passes and we still have a significant weakness in the left one. She prescribed us leg yields in canter (from outside leg to inside rein, not the “normal” kind that she had us do several years ago) and haunches-in down the long side. I’ve been doing haunches-in on a circle, but that’s not cutting it anymore.

This is where she wants him to be so that he puts on more
muscle, I'm not unhappy with how he's looking here even if that
damn friesian neck btv-ness will haunt me forever

We also started riding the half passes all the way across the long diagonal to make sure TC was at that level of commitment to the sideways so that approaching centerline, he wasn’t too excited about stopping. Then we held the counter canter and discovered that his changes are STILL hit or miss.

It’s gotten to the point where I just barely school them. I need to get over it, but they just don’t feel good sometimes and I’m paranoid about ruining them. Tanya had us do them and then pointed out that TC doesn’t stay on the bit during them. Yeah, I know that, but apparently this is now the reason why they are so hit or miss! I was being lax about it thinking that he needed to get a little hollow to make them work (typical in training) but really, he can’t jump through them as effectively. So once I kept him rounder, he was much much much better in them. I was really excited about that!

We finished with some trot work. The shoulder-in is pretty spectacular these days, so we focused more on the half passes. Again, he needed to have more activity in his right hind in the left half pass, so she had me really press him for that. He gave me a really really good one by the end and we let him end on that.

Collected and engaged, hallelujah! 

I was really excited about the lesson, mostly because it didn’t feel nearly as far off as what I’ve been doing at home. The more I insist on being the conductor, the better TC goes.

Tanya and I chatted about TC’s remaining issues and she wanted me to order him a new muscle builder. She said that he just doesn’t have the muscle tone that she’d expect of a horse at this level BUT that he’s half friesian and will take longer to put on muscle than normal horses. She said under no circumstances does she want me to back off or not ride him as much, that’s obviously not what is going to put on muscle.

I ordered the muscle supplement and will try it for a month. If I think it works, I’ll pull him off his normal one and just leave him on this one. If it doesn’t work, oh well! It was worth a shot. Also next on my list is to get the vet out to do his teeth, it’s a bit early but may as well. And I’ll have her draw blood and do a blood panel while she’s at it. I’m thinking he might be a little low in vitamin E or he might be slightly anemic if anything. May as well try it out. I’m thinking that we’re about to begin schooling the FEI level work and I have the time/money right now to figure out what he may need to help him out there.

Schooling All of Third Level

On Friday evening, I had a lesson! It was the first lesson since early March, where if you remember, TC bucked through the entire two rides with Tanya.

I think Tanya was happy to see that TC bucked zero times in our ride. He did, however, get so amped that he bolted out of the dressage court with me. I don't blame him, it was windy and he'd had a day off the day before and the girth debacle the day before that.

The lesson was fabulous as usual, sometimes I feel it's Tanya and TC working together and I'm just there paying for it and trying not to get in their way. Not because she's riding him or anything, but because he gives me the feeling of being like "SEE JUST DO IT THAT WAY MOM, thanks auntie Tanya, I've been trying to explain that to her" but he's so sweet I can't imagine him sassing me like that.

Baby TC turning from this into something that can be ridden
in canter half pass is amazing to me. Also look how big I look
on him here! 

We began a little late because my Soloshot decided that despite working perfectly for months and months, it wanted to low key film the trees instead of me. Then I got it sort of working and TC bopped it with his nose. Of course he did. So it recalibrated again and then refused to take any video of me the whole lesson. Great.

Because I had only walked when Tanya got there, she had to see what she immediately thought was a very ineffective warm up.

I tend to warm TC up on a long rein because he loves stretching, then we canter on a longish rein and then I pick him up and we get to work. I figure it's good for him to stretch down because it was such a hard thing for him, good to warm up his muscles. Tanya wanted me to do a more aggressive warm up though, which is fair. She had me doing steep leg yields, both shoulder-in and haunches-in and did some pretty intense shortenings and lengthenings. I do have to admit, when we popped into canter, his initial quality of canter was much better than normal.

Seriously this canter has taken a very long time

She had us canter left first, I usually canter right because he's just trickier to the left. Sure enough, he was pleasant at the canter left but then she had me ask him to do literally anything else and he came back against me with his neck. She was not pleased, she cited the submission part of the collective marks and basically told me that he wasn't through if I couldn't put my leg on or turn him on a smaller figure without him backing off. The way I was correcting it wasn't effective enough and she had me essentially bend and keep him bent (vs my annoying new tendency to bend him and then lose the outside shoulder, so then I straighten him, and rinse, repeat, it's not great), then follow through on the outside side to push him up and over into contact.

Once I did this, TC was like "yep sure" and everything felt way way easier. He almost seemed to take a deep breath and settle into work much easier. She then had me change directions through the walk and we looked at the much higher quality right lead canter. She was happy with where that was at and we just did a few things to rev him up and get him a bit straighter.

From there, we chatted about where TC was at. I said we were schooling canter half pass and that was going okay but not show ready yet. I also mentioned the changes were rough and she said she was expecting that. I told her about the kicking change too, but she said she didn't really mind kicking changes. I explained that the fact that TC and Rico are the only two that have ever done it to me was making me insane and she's like "yep that's enough to drive you crazy, but try not to worry about it" and we were off.

His typical left lead canter, just not quite through

We started working on the half pass left by heading down the long side in haunches in. TC immediately got stacked up and tried to break, Tanya noted that he just didn't seem to understand what was expected of him. We came back on the circle and she had me put his haunches in there, which helped a little bit, then she had me draw his shoulder out to help him understand the positioning. That caused a bit of a breakthrough moment and our half pass was way better.

Still though, he really struggles to understand how to move from right to left at the canter on the left lead. So she had me go from H to A, put him very straight, then put him in a counter positioning and basically push him sideways toward centerline. This worked FABULOUSLY well and she told me to do it until it was easy, continue the haunches-in on the circle until that's easy, then combine the two and I've got a canter half pass.

The right half pass was fabulous out of the gate, she just wanted to make sure that I kept the collection in the half pass rather than let him get long. Great!

A much better left lead canter, much more lifted through his
body and responsive to my aids

We kind of randomly put in changes throughout and she had some complaints. First is that I sometimes walk him after the changes and she told me that if I keep doing that, he won't learn to jump through the change and that's an environment ripe for kicking. I loved that thought. I tend to walk after the changes sometimes for two reasons: 1) a reward for TC being a good boy and 2) to prevent him from thinking that he can get strong and use the change as a way to take off with me. He's confirmed enough now where both of those are unnecessary.

We ended with going down the long side, doing a half circle at E/B to X, then half passing to H/M and immediately doing a flying change out of the half pass. He's never done that but he took to it okay, except the kicking change was on full display!

Tanya blew my mind with this. As a reminder, I rode with a lot of trainers who couldn't figure out why I caused Rico to kick at my right leg. We just chocked it up to him being old and this being a habit that was caused by who knows what early on. Then TC started kicking at that same leg in the same way and I began to go crazy.

Both are improved from this canter before

Tanya told me two things: first, I keep my right leg too far back in the left lead canter, especially in the half pass. The half pass aid is not the outside leg behind the girth, it's the outside rein and outside thigh. THEN she said I don't keep my internal rotation on the right leg especially as it goes to swing forward... causing my spur to graze his barrel on the right side.

She had me go back and keep my right leg quite forward and she told me not to move it an INCH as I asked for the change, just to swing my left leg. I did and he gave me the best left to right change he's ever given me.

I brainstormed afterward with Kate. Rico is exceptionally wide in his barrel, so I was a tiny flea on his back even though he was only 16.2 and I'm 5'6 with long legs. I wore big spurs with him because he was lazy. TC is not wide at all, but he has a deep girth, so I look like a tiny flea on him too even though he too is only 16.2. I wear big spurs with him because I had those in my locker and I'm a good rider with good body control, I can keep my spur out of his side. And I can... mostly.

Other horses I've put changes on/ridden changes on have been either smaller or narrower than my two big bodied horses. So it was all just a coincidence that MY horses were kicking at my leg when others weren't. It was just the size and shape of their barrel.

So now this is my project, I'm going to work to get control over my right leg and fix it before doing too many more changes with TC. If I still have this issue, I'll switch spurs to something smaller. I love my spurs and how he goes with them in every other bit of work we do, but I am NOT going to be dealing with a kicking change anymore.

Rico's left to right change was always quite good

You can see him kicking at me and also see why, DAMNIT how
did NONE of the trainers I rode with for YEARS not figure this out

Just that last thirty seconds of help with the change was enough to make me SO HAPPY with the lesson, let alone having a huge breakthrough with the canter half pass and throughness to the left. And I was in the lesson getting a little frustrated with my lack of collection in the right half pass and realized... we're doing canter half pass in a lesson! This is so exciting! He's schooling all of Third level now and it's so fun!