Rebuilding the Collection

On Tuesday I had another lesson with the local trainer! It was potentially my last one for a little bit, I keep warning her that I might disappear not because I don't like her but because we have so much potentially working against us coming up. First, I might be taking a new job next week, I'm leaning against it but who knows, really. Second, we may be losing our saddle next week (more on that later). Third, the air quality could go at any given point. But I figure I was available this week and so we made it happen!

TC honestly only got ridden twice since our lesson last Tuesday. He had his acupuncture Wednesday, then got the day off Thursday, then I rode him Friday morning before leaving for the airport and then Monday when I got back. Luckily he's got his giant pasture and about every other morning he canters around like a loon so he was good to go on Tuesday for our lesson. 

Look at this damn tail

Where we got his trot to, wow

I was happy to feel that TC was a little more normal in the trot when I picked it up. She asked whether he was normal this time because last time she thought he was quite behind my leg and I assured her that he actually is quite forward thinking. We agreed last time that he was just nervous being there. This time he did feel better and I told her as such. 

We started with some trot work posting and I got reminded to keep my eyes up and my collarbone long. When I did that, I screwed up my posting mechanic which was annoying, so we focused on leaving my posting mechanic alone from my knee to my sternum and instead working on just influencing where my head was placed on my body. This has been a long time issue of mine so none of it was surprising, but TC felt way better with my new position so hopefully this time it will stick. Fingers crossed! 

We discussed what we had gone over last time, which was a focus on longitudinal balance. I told her that TC was tough for me to feel anything on, especially his longitudinal balance. It was infuriating to go ride my client's PSG horse, a horse who I say would lean on barbed wire if you'd let her, and feel the MOMENT that the horse lost her balance. 

TC is just super polite and doesn't change anything about the connection or the feeling under you when he loses balance, he just drops his withers a bit. She challenged me to focus on other things, can I feel his front feet landing softer? can I feel his hind legs better when he's balanced? can I feel anything under my seat or thigh? TC may not tell me about it in the typical ways, but I will be able to figure it out over time. I think this is a major goal of mine this fall and something that will be key to making the return to Third level for us. 

He's too cute, I have to look at him

She said she wanted to play with that in sitting trot more but that first we should canter him. I put him in left lead canter and he was a bit balky but not too bad, definitely worse there than at home so I let her know that he was still figuring out how to canter there. 

For the left, she wanted him to reach more to the left rein so encouraged me to leg yield him off my outside leg into my inside rein and almost encourage him to fall a bit that way. She likes to show the horses (well, horses like TC) that they can find balance and stability in reins by setting themselves up to lose a little bit of balance laterally and then letting them find the rein they're hiding behind. She's really good at navigating the connection issues in a rather simple way, I really like that! 

To the right, he felt fan-freaking-tastic to me so he was probably on the forehand. I told her as such and she agreed that he could carry a bit more weight behind. She thought it was that he wasn't reaching so much with his left (outside) front leg and that was interesting to me. I've always been told that they should snap the outside front leg off the ground quickly but I never thought about the reach there. She encouraged me to use my outside thigh to bring his outside front leg more forward. 

WOW that helped so much and I felt like I had a lot more collection to play with. Definitely something I'm going to play with at home. 

Learning to reach with that left front leg

Reaching for the left rein, I love it

We took a break and then talked about the sitting trot. She wanted me to imagine his back as a trampoline and to help him understand how to push up against my seat a bit. Against is the wrong word... but we talked about how on a trampoline, if you want it to bounce you higher, you stay a little stiffer in your joints vs if you want it to stop bouncing you, you absorb the bounce in your joints. Could I allow my seat to be heavier to help him find a little more bounce to encourage him to raise is back? She said that might help vs thinking suction (I already think so much suction with this horse if it were possible to lift him off the ground, we'd be in the circus already). 

I told her I was very unfit, and I am. This summer has been tough to put TC and myself first because two of my main clients were going for some big things (upper level pony club rating and USDF Silver medal, both succeeded but I sacrificed a lot for that to happen). I'm now back in a program for developing my own fitness but I'm still six months away from feeling actually fit enough to ride my exhausting horse. 

That was okay, we did a lot of trot walk transitions working on getting a good quality trot and then giving us both a break. The first bit of sit trot to the left was tough on both of us. She pointed out that I needed to be able to add leg and not have his balance change and I was struggling to find the timing for that. 

We took a break and then went to the right and I really figured it out! I had to be quick to recycle the energy that my leg was creating but being quick without letting the aids get chaotic was tough to figure out without my once strong core helping me out. Definitely putting that at the top of my fitness list. 

This is a very different look for my horse and I am
HERE FOR IT, even triangles and IFV wow okay

Sitting this trot is no joke

We let him be done after that and just chatted. I found her after my lesson to give her money and we had another fun conversation where she showed me some horses. We talked about clients and how tricky it can be to teach professions and take lessons as a professional. So far I really feel like she's ready to be creative, think outside the box, and let me be involved in my horse's training. 

So that's exciting! We'll see how things go over the next week. TC got his teeth done on Wednesday, we have some plans for next week that may or may not pan out, and then next weekend, we have the saddle fitter out again. I am not comfortable buying the saddle or ordering one through this brand so we will either give the saddle back or see if the fitter can get it fitting better and then we'll do another trial month. 

Changing TC's Posture

Yesterday I had a lesson with a new to us trainer! And I realized it was the first time we'd hauled out to work since early March, which is good because we're showing in just a few days. I'm happy to report that the horse gave no fucks and even showed off his very fancy changes (which continue to get bigger, I can't understand how we'll ever string together tempis in a space as small as a dressage court).

Anne is my physical therapist (and very accomplished CDI rider and dressage judge) and I had mentioned to her back in February that I did want to take lessons from her at some point. But then the pandemic hit.

I reached out to her because I couldn't get my shit together with my remote lessons and I wanted another perspective on TC's weird topline issues and throughness/rideability. Anne has a lot of experience working with very different types and her mom actually trained several Ideal babies so she's familiar with this type. She's also so so so good with the biomechanics and I was certain that was part of it.

TC being amazing, me not sure what to do with my body in
this place

I warned her that we have a show this weekend and that I was fine to just have this be an introductory lesson where she can get to know us, then we could do more later. I then told her that I couldn't get my strings on him and couldn't get his withers up. She told me that some horses break strings and you need to be more like the terminator and think of it more of a machine with hydraulics attaching to the horse. I liked that visual. But the fact obviously remained that I just couldn't get him up under me.

We started with some warm up trot and canter, and TC was a bit strung out, but he was stepping nicely into the bridle and was quite forward off my leg. Anne's first impressions were that he wasn't engaging his pecs enough and that he was just a little out behind and on the forehand. Yep, that's my horse! She made sure to tell me that he was absolutely where he needed to be for Third level and I shouldn't worry, but that these tendencies will affect the feeling that I don't have any influence over him. She also very kindly reminded me that Third level is designed to introduce a lot of the upper level movements and that in her R judging program, they told the judges to not expect a lot of clean tests at that level with it being the first time horses are doing changes and half passes in the ring.

This is TC's natural way of standing, no wonder he is so tricky
to put together, my god horse, look more like you're going to fall
on your face. 

She had me do a little work in canter on a smaller circle, saying to let exercises collect him so I can add leg to get him to sit. That did work quite nicely and he showed off a beautiful change to swap directions. We then walked and I told her that canter was my strong gait and that the trot was rough for both of us, which is funny because he's built to trot. We discussed that TC loses the explosive power when he collects his gaits and then she asked whether I'd ever worked in "creep"

Tracey had me ride Rico in creeping gaits (basically extremely short strided, but very active gaits). This put Rico firmly behind the leg and so I've tended to only use it on very forward horses to great success. TC is not particularly forward in the collected gaits, therefore I have not used it on him.

I was a bit concerned but figured I'd come out on Wednesday and do an entire ride in a working gallop if I had to. We began in walk and she had me slow him down. My concern grew. But Anne made sure that he stayed in front of my leg, that is, after all, part of the purpose of the exercise. Something that had not been emphasized nearly enough when I was riding Rico (and one of the reasons why I went to Heidi momentarily to snag my Gold medal)

Working my damned hardest to stay in a flexion pattern and
I just fucking cannot, but also my horse has never made this
shape with his body so something is working I suppose

Our main goal was to get him to shift from his chest down posture to a more upright, pecs engaged posture with his hind legs stepping further under his body. To do this, he needed to be active behind but shifting his mass back, so we started with the mass and then activated the hind legs. Frequent transitions out helped him understand that he needed to be ready to go at any moment, but coming back could be difficult because I find it so easy to push horses, not to encourage them to carry.

I had to stay in a flexion pattern in my body, which I tend to lose. Anne pointed out that when I go to trot, I drop my knees down a bit (cannot wait to have decent blocks on my new saddle so I can actually notice this) and this causes me to let go of my flexion pattern the most. She wanted me to imagine wearing bike shorts and yanking them up toward the block at the seams in the middle of my thighs.

I was shocked at how difficult this was. My core burned as it always does (this horse's gaits, y'all) but this was in a very different way. More of a crunch than a stabilizing hold, so I fatigued quickly. My inner thigh is still burning today, and my hip flexors feel weird.

Working so hard and yet, still in extension in my upper body

But TC's posture fully changed. I could feel him shift his mass back, it always started out with a slight resistance in the bridle, then a falter in his gait, then I could finally feel his hind legs. Anne asked a lot of questions, can I feel him slipping left, can I feel his mass shift back, can I feel both long back muscles. I had to stop and tell her "what I'm most excited about in this moment is the fact that I can feel his hind legs for the first time EVER" because it was true. I knew exactly where they were because *shocker* they were under my seat.

When we got this posture right, Anne encouraged me to soften my hand and see if I could hold it. This was not new information, I literally use this lesson to deal with horses who lean on the rider's hands. I can rattle off a ton of people who have taken this exact lesson from me and probably assumed this was coming next. BUT I haven't ever done this with TC because he is the type of horse who needs to be much more INTO the bridle, right?

Well, Anne said yes but no. She said that he was approaching Fourth level and needed to be able to carry himself, obviously. The lightness in the bridle is just his conformation, I have to determine self carriage in other ways, such as when I give the reins, does he drop his back vs when I give the reins, does he lighten up. It was interesting. I gave the reins and he sought contact as he always does, but sometimes it was in the posture we had put him in and sometimes it was because he dropped his wither down. We schooled it a bunch and by the end, got a few steps here and there where I could get his neck out without losing that posture.

So hard to get him into this place and tell when he's there, now
we will begin working on my posture lol

I was SO pleased with the lesson. It was mostly walking (we only cantered for like 3 minutes because I told her I couldn't ride his trot), lots of talking, and just working on a circle. But it was exactly what TC and I needed! All the walk work translated into the best quality trot I've ever felt and a canter where I felt like I could ride a canter pirouette if I so felt like it. Transitions in and out were stellar too, sometimes I feel like I have to drop him into trot and just hope that he stays with me, this time I had complete influence over every limb, so I could decide when to put him into trot.

I'm super excited to ride with Anne again. I think she's my missing piece in TC and his training plan. I adore Tanya but I see Tanya as a trainer who pushes me along the levels. She's the one I'm going to ride TC's first canter pirouettes with and TC's first tempi changes with. Then I go to Anne and work on the basics, work on the details, figure out how to help TC stay under himself while doing the movements Tanya has us doing. They know each other well and both have a biomechanics background, so I'm certain that they won't work against each other (the biggest issue IMO in riding with multiple trainers and why I haven't ever done this in the past).

I think I'll see Anne again in early July. This Friday we have our show, then the SO and I found a cabin to rent at a campground nearby for a night next week so that takes away two riding days, then Tanya comes in and I go teach a clinic, then I'm hopefully getting a saddle (at least one on trial). I'm hoping to get Anne's opinion on the saddle (it will be too late for Tanya), so that'll be early July. I think depending on everyone's schedule and the show schedule, I'd love to ride with Tanya once a month (as I have been) and Anne twice a month, then for my fourth lesson a month, I'll either do a remote lesson with Tanya or add another Anne lesson, depending on what TC and I need.

Even More Biomechanics

On Friday and Saturday, Nicole brought one of the trainers I met at the Mary clinic in to her barn! I really wanted to ride with her, but I also have a horse who is very hit or miss right now and have no way of getting over there anyway. Hopefully TC will settle, and I'll have a good idea of what my trailer budget is by the end of April, really hoping that I can resolve that problem as early as May!

But I obviously wasn't going to miss out on an educational opportunity if I didn't have to, so on Friday (which I had off from work, which was so awesome), I zipped over to Nicole's barn to watch the clinic.

This clinic feels like a lifetime ago!

Alexis is a Grand Prix dressage trainer and was a demo rider at the Mary clinic on her sometimes tricky but very talented stallion. Seeing her ride this horse and hearing stories about him made me very sure that I wanted to work with her. And then finding out that she regularly works with Friesian x Warmblood crosses really solidified it for me. She also has a fabulous dog, which is always a major plus in my book.

The focus of the clinic was biomechanics, which was great. Kate and I have had many a conversation about biomechanics since the Mary clinic and have helped each other out a bit with it too. I've audited another potential trainer who was at the clinic as well. But it was great to see Alexis' take on the whole thing, and I was really impressed.

Here were some of the things I took away:

Water Pooling Up
I want to write a whole post on the landau reflex and how learning about it has completely changed the way I deal with TC's bolting issue, but Alexis had a great visualization for it. Imagine that the musculature of the horse's topline (and/or the backline of the horse) is a hose and that water flows through it from the hindquarters, over the back and under the saddle, up over the neck, and then into the bridle. When the horse retracts their head and neck backward, the water flows backward and pools. Immediately I imagined the pool of water being right on the horse's wither, since that's where TC wants to drop when he gets his neck backward like that, but you could also imagine it pooling under the saddle where a lot of horses drop their backs.

Pulling on the face is just encouraging this water to continue to pool. Instead of going to the reins at all (and she was pretty adamant that you don't do any pulling/wiggling/wobbling/shaking the bit/*~*softening*~* and I was nodding vigorously by that point I think), you need to find a way to get the water flowing out to the bridle again. This comes from getting the back up. Some horses, like the one in the clinic, really convince you it's all about the jaw/neck/head. They shake it at you, throw it back in your face... but it's not at all about the neck or the jaw or the head placement.

Um excuse me I am not the type to put my ears in
your nostrils, no sir

Suction Cups
One cool thing that came out of both her lecture and a couple lessons was the idea of a suction cup. I've mostly read and discussed it in terms of the seat, so we'll do that first. The rider can do three things with the way their seat interacts with the horse's back. They can squash the horse's back down away from them, they can stay neutral, or they can suck the horse's back up. All in the way the rider is sitting. Alexis emphasized that sometimes for riders, it's hard enough to get into neutral, where the rider is simply staying out of the horse's way and allowing the horse to move under them. But when you start to become really good, you can start to change the way horses use themselves simply by how you sit on them, that you start leading the horse with your superior structure/way of riding.

I've used this a fair amount in teaching, instructing people to sit the trot they want the horse to have or to think about pulling the saddle back off the horse's withers/shoulders in the canter (another way of describing the slingshot). But I've mostly used it with regard to the seat.

Alexis also said that it can be used with the leg as well. If you have a horse who falls away from one leg and into the other, it can be tempting to make space under the leg the horse falls away from, then use the other leg to hound the horse into the void. Horses do not want to go into the void. So the idea is to get the loose leg on and then drive the horse into that contact. Suction cups do not suck unless you put pressure on first. You can't just hold a suction cup away from something and expect it to draw that object toward it (that's a magnet).

Magnetic pull toward himself (man I miss mirrors)

Using the Ground
A lot of what came out of the clinic I'd heard and/or taught before (to be perfectly honest, not a lot is brand brand new to me in the second toolkit), but the way Alexis put things into words made another of layer of realization appear. For example, a certain airy fairy horse needed more impulsion. Impulsion is the horse pushing off the ground and thrusting themselves forward.  I know these things. The way Alexis put it was that the horse didn't want to use the ground. If he had his way, he'd just float along. And it really struck a cord with me.

TC has had some issues with impulsion, less involving the ground and more involving the suppleness of his back (a big part of impulsion that I always forgot about until it was circled in like... all my tests last year). But thinking about his hind legs using the ground in a productive way, vs just floating along (which TC does do at times). Alexis emphasized that this is mirrored in the rider, if posting is just going up and down, you're not going to influence the horse to push more off the ground. She focused on getting more of a hydraulic post and it really translated to the horse.

This amount of impulsion took years to develop. I think I'm still
too scared to know how much impulsion he could have lol

As much as I want to take all my money and throw it into lessons immediately, my plan is to let TC settle into his barn situation for the month of April. While that happens, I will teach as much as I can (I blasted emails to the pony clubs nearby this last weekend and heard back!) to help accelerate my trailer purchase. In the mean time, I asked Alexis if she had a horse I could take a lesson on and she said yes! A few! So I think I'll schedule something with her on one of her horses.

There are a ton of benefits to this situation. First, I get used to driving out to her place and can see what it would be like to haul there (since you know, new rig + new roads = eek). I can also work solely on myself without having to worry about TC's sometimes tricky behavior and our history together. Alexis can get to know me as a rider on a horse she is familiar with so she can really dig into my issues before seeing how they affect TC (maybe I'll even get her on TC!). And TC gets the benefit of me getting better and having more things to work on without having to go off the property just yet. I can feel like we're making progress toward our goals this year even before having a trailer. Plus, I might bombard her with videos of TC to get some input on what she thinks of him.

After that my ideal situation would be to ride with her twice a month. Maybe once a month driving out to her place (and possibly staying overnight if I can swing it since it's 1.5 hours away) and then once a month coercing her into coming out here. I'm also going to keep auditing in this area of course, and see who else comes out here. I gotta get my teaching business up and going so I can do all these fun educational opportunities myself!

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.