Responsive

TC was really great in our last lesson! And it was such a good lesson. We'd been schooling a bunch of the Second and Third level things from our past and I was pretty pleased by how he was feeling in the half passes, and I had started really drilling the half steps and the canter to walk transitions. 

But coming to Kate with those things felt very... this lesson with Tracey in 2013. Wow, blast from the past rereading that. I think I might have glossed over this part in that post, but I vividly remember going into that lesson talking a big game about how we were schooling X and Y and really needed to work on Z in order to move up to Prix St George. And then she brought us back to the basics. 

Looking good! My left hand remains like this,
but that's fine, we'll work on it

Pivo doesn't record very well during lessons oh well

Thirteen years later, I've learned my lesson. Because when Kate and I talked about what to work on in this lesson, I mentioned two things:

1. I think TC waits until I'm about to get after him for not responding to my leg... to respond to my leg. So he's late off the aid and even if I do a bunch of transitions, he seems to know when I'm about to swat him. 

2. He reins back SO SLOWLY oh my god, he inches backwards like a snail. 

Neither of those things are hugely problematic, they don't feel all that related to the half pass or the canter to walk necessarily, but responsiveness is a huge issue with this horse that I want to address. I'm not looking to go back to where we were before, with him feeling kinda blah and me having to like, drag him through movements. 

Trail rides have been fun lately

Sure enough, the exercises we did got him so responsive and easy to ride that clearly the movements I was struggling with were not going to be the issue! 

We changed how I was asking for things first. I rode on a square with quarter turns on the forehand at each corner and I was to ask him for the turn first with my seat, which I had not been doing. Do less with my leg, so then when my leg does come on, he's had ample time to at the very least prepare to do the movement. Then I was to ride a full 360 degree turn if I didn't get the response that I wanted, steadily adding a bit of pressure with my whip (light taps getting harder) until he was really moving around. Then go back to the quarter turns. 

The same type of increasing aid in my transitions to trot, ask with my seat first, then slowly close the leg, then slowly adding harder and harder taps until he was really moving, then settle into a trot that was more appropriate. This made a huge difference for me, because I get pretty emotional about any sort of blah feeling moving forward because of our past, and having to really smack him for it is a no-go for me mentally. But by the time I've gotten to a true "smack" with the whip, he's had so much time to get his butt moving that it's like brother, you could have avoided this. And we really didn't have to get to anything close to that. It was like he thought I could increase forever and he was like oh shit she just doesn't stop, I gotta go. 

We both appreciate the shade though

As we were doing these walk to trot transitions, we inevitably had to do trot to walk transitions, and I got called out on those pretty immediately. I let him die in those transitions. I really didn't think I did, because he stays pretty well up to my hand and stays nicely under himself, but what he does is he kind of braces against the back edge of my aid. So sure physically he's right there, but my aid is doing a lot of the heavy lifting to keep him there, vs him being more in self carriage and on my seat. 

So we explored slowing down very slowly, verrry slowly asking his trot to get smaller and smaller until he was in walk, and sometimes pushing him out of it. Which I thought I was already doing pretty well, but I needed to be even pickier about it. There's a slight pushing back he does when he's like, quietly dislodging from my seat to predict that we're going to walk, and since I'm actively asking for walk, that just feels like obedience, but it's not! 

This girl has been okay, had a bad
reaction to her chemo pill but is
recovering

After working on those transitions, we did some reining back work. The idea was the same, take about four seconds to go from zero aid to the perfect rein back aid, then slowly tap on his shoulder, increasing slowly and steadily with taps until he is reining back in the way I want him to. And then we took it a step further and went into second gear reining back (even faster) so that I knew I had it. 

He was so funny, at one point I started to set up for the reinback and he got himself so balanced that he decided to offer a jambette, silly boy. We talked a little bit about his posture - he tends to curl a little in the rein back and we do want to fix that. But I'm focusing a lot on the responsiveness, which does depend on the balance, don't get me wrong, but I figured that I'd address the curling once we got the responsiveness down a few days in a row. 

Having a pet with cancer is brutal,
but with complications it's even worse

We did a bit of trot after this and he was QUITE forward, it was so much fun. He was almost... too forward. He kinda left a few times, not in a bolt, but definitely too far out in front of me. And that's when we started talking about how, he's kind of like a stereotypical mediocre white man in corporate america. 

He kind of thinks my ideas are not worth acting on, except then he'll take my ideas (e.g. being forward) and propose them at another time and I'm supposed to just go along with it because I guess I did want him to do that. 

He's annoyed when I'm late (e.g. I get left behind when he zips off) but when he's late (e.g. to my aid), I'm rude for pointing it out.

He complains endlessly about having to do his job (e.g. being slow into the arena, trying to get us to turn to the trails instead of the arena) and then still expects a promotion (e.g. cookies, I frequently have to say "you haven't DONE anything").

And maybe he's a bit red-pilled, because he thinks that I should stop trying to "lead" and let him "lead" but he's a terrible leader because all he wants to do is stand in the shade and ask for me to give him cookies. 

Anyway, my homework is to start bullying him a little more like I already bully (in a professional way) the men at my job. My ideas are good, we should act on them now, we will both be on time, you are to follow my lead on things where I am the subject matter expert (he doesn't know nearly as much about dressage as I do). 

Excuse me, I haven't once said the
word synergy

We touched on the canter and it was a bit more of the same kind of thing, keep him on my seat. And then we had a bit of time left and I asked Kate about how TC likes to fall out to the right when tracking left. It's super manageable, way better than it was before, but again it's like he's leaning on my aid. From the outside he looks straight, but I have to work to keep him there. Better than him flying through the aid, but not good enough. 

She had me imagine that there was a squishy piece of foam between my right rein and his neck, and that by pressing my rein into it (so not actually touching his neck), I could push him around on a 15 meter circle. If he didn't turn, I was to do the increasing taps on his right shoulder, and also focus on drawing him in with my inside rein to show him that there was room there. We alternated between circles and then riding down the long side, and it felt WAY better. He was much easier to steer and I didn't feel like I had to do so much management!

I had to screenshot this because it's applicable even
to this silly sport

It was such a great lesson and then I immediately went out of state! But my rider (who also rides with Kate) rode TC twice over the weekend and she does such a nice job with him. I can't wait to get back on and ride him and work on this stuff! 

Also, so cute, I didn't get pictures, but I let Rico out in TC's paddock when I was riding TC and he rolled in TC's sand pile (but not his? ugh) and then sniffed around the whole paddock. So I think I'm going to do that more often! TC was beside himself but too bad, so sad, Rico gets whatever he wants. 

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 Long Time Coming - Our First Dressage Lesson Back

Oh wow it's been a minute. I've been insanely busy at work and loving it, but have let the blog fall to the bottom of the to do list. 

TC is doing fabulously well though! He's actually feeling really amazing in my (real) saddle, which I got back a couple of weeks ago, and we started the collected work again and that's going SUPER well for basically the first time ever. 

Because of that, on Sunday, I took TC over the hill to ride with a trainer I've ridden on and off with for years. This was our first real dressage lesson in about a year and our first lesson with her in 1.5 years. It went SO well. I'm so glad we went and I definitely want to go back. 

Working a TON on the collection, this is from a
week or two ago, working on walk pirouette to
canter and learning to sit down a bit better

I got to the barn kind of early and it was cool, so TC walked out of his stall on his tip toes snaking his neck because he knew we were going somewhere. I decided that not dying was more important than being on time, so I let him play in the arena. He rolled a few times, ran a bunch, at one point he grabbed a small plant out of the ground and galloped around with it, flinging his head like a dog with a rope toy. Also not letting me grab it out of his mouth like a dog would. Then I finally did get it and then later, he galloped by it and snatched it up again, only to accidentally step on it and yank it out of his own mouth. Absurd. 

This paid off because at our destination, he was quiet but not too tired. He warmed up beautifully! I always forget that in better quality footing and in an arena that's actually normal size/shape, he moves SO much better. We had so much suspension and he was just RIGHT there under me. 

Don't steal my stick - TC

At the beginning of the lesson, I explained that we hadn't been doing *real* dressage for about a year, that we'd been focusing more on just having fun and trying to change the way that TC uses his body. She noted that this was good, but that he was probably going to be who he was going to be due to his conformation. Challenge accepted. Well, mostly I'm kidding, but it's a good reminder for me to remember that he does not have to be perfect. 

We warmed up and she was quite complimentary of where he was at. She noted that I'm riding him QUITE long in the neck, which she understands given how he went before but she wants him to now find a happy medium. 

There were some minor position changes, which I made sure to note: watch that my left hand does not prevent him from connecting and watch that my right leg doesn't stay too far back. These are very typical for me, but I'm always happy to hear them again!

He was paid well in cookies, believe me

The main theme of the lesson was using transitions to bring more tone into his body to help him with the collection and connection. I was SO unbelievably proud of him. He was so obedient and really stayed true to his spinal integrity for most of the lesson. The only times he slipped up was in the left canter, which is a challenge at home still anyway. 

This is a horse who has, in the past, just willingly contorted his body to do whatever I ask him to do, to his detriment and to mine as then we don't really get the result necessary. It felt like he said multiple times "I can't without compromising myself" and I was able to say "that's okay, do your best" and he was able to do that. 

I have the TCS to thank for that, it really drew my intention to the spinal integrity and I feel like I was able to call him out very early on him not maintaining it. As he got stronger, it feels like he was able to understand that yes, this indeed feels way better. 

Anyways, I figure I'll go through each transition in more details! 

He is so silly

In the walk, he needed more power and tone to stay in front of my leg. I've been told not to run him off his feet, so I've allowed the walk to be smaller and more deliberate, but I've gone in too much that direction. He is to practice his "quite good walk once he actually gets going" regularly and not "plod along as if he's on a trail ride" all the time. 

Once we had that, the walk to trot transition was actually quite good. We have done a TON of work in the creeping walk to the creeping trot, working on keeping him in his body/more like a rectangle. His tendency is to basically lean forward until he's about to fall over, like a rhombus, and then his legs pick up the trot to catch his balance. But in working on this, we lost the big, brilliant medium walk he has. He is now ready to do both, go from a prowling medium walk to a collected trot without compromising his balance in either. 

Slow walking = trail ride only

I also needed to keep his neck long but my reins shorter, the length of his neck coming from the base lifting, not from the reins being long. Right now I put him so far out that he has no choice but to keep his neck long at the base, which has been helpful for getting him uncoiled. But he does need to continue to lift his neck at the base as he shortens his frame, since that will be required for collection. 

At first I was like... I do not want to shorten his neck... but luckily the barn has mirrors so I kept looking over and what I felt was borderline too short was actually SUPER WEAK AND LONG. So that's good for me to note. It now feels much shorter than it is. 

Still though, there were moments where this felt precarious. I don't want to go backwards, so I'll be taking video and experimenting a bit. What is the optimal rein length to maximize him lifting through the base of his neck? We'll find out! 

Neck is quite long lol, I like it though! But I get
what she was saying

In the trot to walk transition, I was to keep him in front of the leg and up through his thoracic sling and poll. I have a tendency to basically let him stop the hind legs and dump a bit into the walk with his poll low. The fix was to keep him in a state of higher tone, which was tricky given that he's not carrying a lot of tension (positive or negative!) in his body. 

To me, this has been the main point of the last year. When he was in biomechanical failure, any tone became negative tension since it would just perpetuate that cycle due to the problematic movement patterns and which muscles he found easiest to carry tone in. Fixing it required me to take all of the tension out of him first, then to address the movement patterns so that he would understand what to engage when moving, then to build those (good) muscles up so that they were stronger than the (bad) muscles he was using before. 

Now though, we need to add tone in order to encourage collection in the trot. And we did! Every time we'd go to walk, if he didn't keep the tone, I was to push him out of it. This generally is one of my favorite exercises and we have been doing it quite a bit at home, but I was held more accountable for my tone and my timing. I can't just drop my tone as we go to walk, I have to hold the quality of the trot in my seat and core. In addition, keeping my core engaged also helped him stay out to contact, something that was an excellent test for whether he stayed balanced enough in the transition or not. 

So absurd

The trot to canter transition was probably our best transition. Honestly what the fuck? I mean, it hasn't been all that great at home necessarily, but it has been our main focus in the TCS so maybe that finally paid off. Or maybe he was like oh thank god if we canter, she'll stop wheezing in the sitting trot. Either way, there wasn't much to be said about it other than to watch that he wants to fold sideways to the left and pop his right shoulder.  

The canter to trot was also not bad. But different on each side. The right lead canter is so much more rideable for me, I think because the spinal integrity is so much easier for him, I don't have to manage it for him. He 

More where we want him, but to me I want his neck
the tiniest bit longer because of course I do

I was SO happy by the end of the lesson for so many reasons. 

First, TC feels AMAZING. He felt so good in his body and so good in his mind. He felt genuinely pleased to be out and doing the thing again, going for a trailer ride, having a human sitting in a chair telling me to ride better, being told he was brilliant, and going home again. His gaits have never felt better, like they've been bigger but they've never been more supple or more cadenced. We will develop the big gaits, but this time he'll be more rideable and happier than he was the last time we had the gaits amplified. 

Second, our relationship is unbelievably rock solid at this point and I didn't realize how palpable the difference was to me until we were put back into a location we'd been before we did all this work. The last time we were at this facility taking a lesson, I was a mess and he was a mess and we were completely disconnected from one another. In this lesson, it felt like we were completely connected and so much more in tune with one another. 

Still time for Friday night music even
with my crazy schedule

Third, it was so much fun to get someone else's eyes on him, a judge's eyes, and to see that I'm not insane. In the last year, I've had just a few lessons, and the vast majority of those have been on the bodywork-type stuff, not real nitty gritty dressage. I sometimes wonder if I've really gone off the deep end and if what I'm doing is even recognizable as dressage, but having her verify that he actually looks really amazing for a dressage horse was great. What I'm working on is right on track with what he needs to be comfortable in his body AND to be a good dressage horse. I didn't realize how much I needed that validation to keep going with my weird shit, but I did! 

Fourth, it was really nice to chat with someone about the prospect of showing again. I feel like I'm so far away from showing at this point. Both because we literally have been doing like... Training and First level work for so long that we have probably lost our changes and many other movements, but also because I feel a little weird about it. Being able to talk to her about showing and why we show was so nice. I left with the feeling that if I do show again, it'll be for the ritual, the experience of preparing for a show, practicing my test, braiding, showing, unbraiding, and going home. She reassured me that the comments don't have to be accurate, the score doesn't have to be what I think it should be, that there are other reasons to show. 

Reasons to show: the horse loves it

We'll definitely be going back! I don't know when, since it's a solid 3/4 day to get over there and back and ride the pony, but it's definitely worth doing at least once a month I think. And now we decide what to do in the mean time... I'm rather afraid of momentum since that's what got us trapped before. But I think I've got a good idea of how I'm going to implement some of these changes into the work I'm already doing that is working so well. Stay tuned! Or, well, stay tuned and also hope that my job allows me to post more! 

Jumping Update

I figure, given that a week from today I'll be showing over fences for the first time in a long time, I should probably provide a jumping update. 

I love his nose in this one, trying so hard

Flounder continues to be the coolest little horse. He's so much fun and gives such a good feeling over fences. For this first year or two that I'm coming back into jumping, he's provided such a nice safe space to do that in without just packing me around. 

Kate is obviously amazing for bringing Flounder into my life, but she's also an amazing instructor. I am having so much fun learning from someone so much more technical than the trainers I had in my youth. There's too much to post about, honestly, but some of the themes have been:

- using my slingshot to improve the way Flounder jumps through a grid

- timing the aid for a lead while in the air and not getting in the way of him responding

- timing my breathing to optimize the way he jumps

- dealing with my right hip and the myriad of issues it's been causing

- addressing my tendency to freeze a bit (and stop breathing) when coming up to a fence I can't see a distance too

- going over the specific mechanics of going from my neutral position into my jumping position without jamming my foot down in the stirrup

And most recently, trying to figure out my mental game as we prepare for this horse show next week!

Is he not the CUTEST

Unimpressed by this one

I'm really excited for the show, but my brain is a little apprehensive. I'd say for the 2 or so years before I quit jumping, show jumping became a problem that I never got to address. 

See, being an assistant trainer at an event barn meant that it was my job to ride babies who had never jumped before and also any horses who didn't jump safely for their owners. This meant that I rode a ton of stoppers, horses who bolted after they landed off of combinations, horses who bucked after jumps, and horses who wouldn't jump fill or spreads or banks or ditches. 

For some reason, this manifested in me being very anxious about showing over show jumps. Cross country? No problem. No idea why, those jumps don't come down!!! Should I not be more afraid out there? Somehow I am not afraid on cross country. And honestly I'm not even afraid over the show jumps, it's hard to explain. My brain just... stops working. 

So adorable

So while I am feeling pretty good in the schooling ring at home, I am wondering how the show will go. But luckily my goals for the show are primarily to gather information. See how deep the issues run, see what it feels like when they kick in, and see how I respond to it. This will allow Kate to dig into it at home and then we'll go to another show this fall to see how I've improved!

I love this plan because I don't really want to sign up for an event only to get to the second day (let's be real, I'll be doing BN or below so I'll be doing cross country last) and have my brain freeze up so I get eliminated. Once I'm an old pro in the arena over fences, THEN I can sign up for an event. 

Wish us luck at the show! We leave on Wednesday, but I'm not taking the days off of work so we'll see what I can do those first few days. But the weekend should be super fun! 

Fixing Myself

On Wednesday of last week, I had a lesson! It was my first (dressage) one in a long time and it was amazing. 

No pictures due to using the pivo for the lesson, but
I have some from a recent trail ride

The focus on the lesson was biomechanics, which I desperately need. I haven't really had anyone pick at my position since last August when I rode with an in person trainer who had a background with the Mary stuff. And my position falls apart easily without anyone's help, especially now that I've been at a barn without mirrors for a year. 

This trainer was a little different from Mary, but everything she found really aligned with everything my Mary trainers have found and that Kate has found. Essentially, while I sit in correct alignment with correct posture, I find my balance through rigidity. That's my interpretation at least. And this tracks through my riding career, when in doubt, add tone. Sometimes in places that it shouldn't be. 

This guy has been developing so well

My biggest takeaways were...

Breathing

It turns out, as Kate has pointed out on numerous occasions, that I only breathe enough to keep me from passing out while I'm riding. And I can confirm that I keep this breathing pattern up throughout my life except in weight lifting (since bracing was drilled so hard into me by my late coach, RIP).

We did some breathing exercises and TC REALLY enjoyed them, he was licking and chewing the entire time I was breathing like a normal human. I feel bad for him, he's probably had to get used to feeling like my body is in flight/fight mode all the time. Oh, that's just my human, she's bad at breathing and it makes me feel like she thinks we're both going to die. 

I'm going to really work on this, I'm not sure exactly how though since it's so engrained to not breathe while I'm riding. Should I listen to a breathing app while I'm riding?? Perhaps. 

He's the best trail horse

Left Hand

If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you know that I'm a big fan of using my left hand to solve all of my problems. Horse acting up? Pull on the left rein. Canter got too big? Pull on the left rein. Horse trips? Left rein. Owe money on taxes? Cut off my left hand and mail it to the government. 

She had me do some arm circles and noted that my left elbow liked to bend slightly when I had my left hand at the very back of the circle. I forced it straight and got some interesting shooting pains and numbness in my fingers. Turns out I've got a little nerve impingement there! It's a chicken and egg situation, did my nerve impingement mean that my left arm likes to hold itself bent and therefore it's easier to pull on that rein? Or do I carry my left arm more bent in my daily life (driving, working, I carry things on the left side and use my right hand to open doors, pulling on the left rein), which caused the nerve impingement? 

Who knows, but the answer is to switch it around. I am currently going through my life, noticing times where my left arm is bent and my right arm is not and trying to swap what the arms are doing to balance them out. I'm also doing a lot of arm circles on both sides. 

Thoracic Spine

My thoracic spine is a bit rigid, causing me to carry my head a bit forward. I know this from Tracey yelling at me not to be a vulture. Luckily because of work, I'm getting to go to the chiropractor as much as I want and only paying a $4 copay for it, so I'm definitely working on fixing my t-spine. But I also got some great exercises from the biomechanics trainer to help with this. It really comes down to me holding tension in my thoracic area and some computer stuff shortening my pectorals. I'm not the only one who needs to widen their chest and open up their shoulders! 

Such a beautiful place, it should stay green for a
bit longer, it's going to rain today

Right Hip

So as a background, almost three weeks ago I was squatting and suddenly had a massive amount of pain in my right hip to the point where I could barely walk on it for a couple of days. I saw the chiropractor who basically said that my psoas and hip flexor were tight. It's been fine since then, but just fine. I took my deadlift day off, just did upper body on my bench day, and then by the next squat day, was able to squat some light weight. I haven't gotten anywhere near the weight I was squatting that day. 

Anyway, this was incredibly obvious to my biomechanics trainer. I think it was the first thing she said actually. 

She agrees that my psoas is the issue, that my body was coping with it until I put it under weight. She wants me to get that worked on, so I think I'll be keeping it light with the squatting until I can get someone to fix it. My job has a lot of healthcare perks (such as acupuncture/chiro with a very small copay) so I'll see if they offer anything that can deal with my psoas too! We used to have massages on campus actually, but the pandemic shut that down, maybe they will happen again soon though!

TC says: would you like me to just
bite this leg right off? Would that help?

Okay, so we've established that my right hip sucks, what effect is it causing in TC? 

As we were tracking left, I was told to try to breathe out while my left seat bone came back and to really let it follow the saddle. This was fairly easy and actually focusing on that moment made it way easier to turn TC to the left, which has long been his tricky side. 

To the right, I was basically unable to let my right seat bone follow the saddle. Rude. We found that my right hip wanted to be the stable one doing all the work, so it got rigid and my left hip was free to do whatever it wanted, which it does in a chaotic way. 

I was taught to engage my inner thigh on my left side to help bring my right hip forward and immediately my body was not having it. 

We cut new trails into the hills! I love
this one, it's so beautiful!

TC's Response

I'm so excited for how TC responded. He's very in tune with me (I'll write about it more later, but I just read Susan Fay's book and it's amazing how WITH me TC is at all times, I almost find it a bit unnerving, but luckily he's the sweetest) and when I can get my body in the right position, he feels downright giddy. 

I think with Celeste's work, TC has been helped SO much, but I'm still locked in these previous patterns and I think that's holding him back a bit at this point. 

Hopefully my new saddle will be here soon and it'll be easier to find a better balance without having to be more rigid. And with a deeper seat and bigger blocks, it will allow me to be more permissive with TC's movement. Right now I'm sure my rigidity to keep my balance slows his roll a bit. 

I will never get tired of riding this horse in these
hills!

I wish I had the money to take weekly lessons with her (boo adulting, most of my raise in salary between jobs is maxing my 401k and FSA and a few other adult things like that), but I think I'll stick with once a month or every other week if I can swing it! Kate can work with me on the same things when I see her for my jumping lessons, so I'll definitely have eyes on these issues between lessons. 

Finding Celeste and her work has been so life changing, not only because of the work she's done with TC and I, but through finding other professionals in her network. So many trainers put "classical" or "biomechanics" on their websites and then I find out that those words have different meanings to different people and I end up a bit disappointed. Or at worse, stuck using some of my lesson budget to pay for a lesson I didn't get much out of. I know that anyone I ride with who is part of this network of trainers is going to, at the very least, do no harm to TC's mechanics, and that's huge for us!

Shifting Back

The only major downside about the rain is not being able to schedule lessons more than like four days in advance. I could easily haul out, but I have given up taking lessons in person right now so hauling out would mean invading someone else's arena with my Pivo and hoping the Pivo doesn't follow them around instead of me. 

I love how lifted he is here

Luckily, the bodyworker clinician had time kind of last minute on Monday morning to work with TC and I! This was our first remote session and it came at a great time. TC has been feeling really good but I don't really know where to go next. 

The lesson was fabulous! 

For the last eight weeks since auditing the first clinic, our work hasn't changed much. The main goal has been to gain influence over the lateral balance and build strength in his pectorals and thoracic sling. 

She said he looked really good in that work! I was so happy to hear that, it just feels the same because of how slow the progression has been. But it has actually gotten better. 

This is the softest I've ever seen him go

Our next task is to work on gaining more influence over the longitudinal balance. The lateral balance has been a relatively easy thing for me to feel, but the longitudinal balance has always been tougher on him. 

She said that his center of gravity is pretty permanently shifted forward. He carries his "soul" way out in front of him in his poll. It was interesting that she mentioned that location because I feel like there's a lot of rigidity left just behind his poll even when he's loose and supple everywhere else. 

As we worked through her series of exercises, I started seeing that part of his neck relax and start to twitch a bit. He felt even better in the contact, which I didn't realize was possible. 

He looks so delicate here

We also got permission to canter! I've cantered him a few times but haven't really worked on it. She gave us a really simple exercise, to basically put him in canter until he starts to lose balance, then bring him back to trot and help him regain the balance first laterally and then longitudinally. I realized that the issues I'd been having (him basically wanting to run off and buck OR stopping immediately) were quite possibly due to longitudinal balance and/or energy. If he runs off, he's got his balance too far forward, if he stops, he doesn't have enough energy. 

I told her that we really struggle with having those things at the same time, either he has enough energy but he's on the forehand, or he's balanced but I can't get him in front of my leg. She gave me some really great stuff to work on for that and by the end he felt so soft and supple, yet powerfully uphill. 

Such a good boy

Finally, we briefly chatted about the future task I have at hand. I really need to address his emotional regulation when he is in a state of "readiness" or feeling coiled. He gets fairly explosive and my nerves got shot at the end of last week when he almost launched me from VERY high up in the air. I have my new helmet coming, but I don't ride in spurs anymore (which I am able to anchor myself with if he really launches) and I don't have my big blocked saddle anymore. So I don't really want to deal with the launchy feeling. 

She recommended a trainer who I've met before and actually who I had wanted to work with anyway. This trainer follows the bodyworker's way of doing things, so there will be a lot of overlap and the trainer uses clicker training too! So when this rain storm is over, I'll be reaching out to see if I can get some help with both improving my clicker training and working on his emotional regulation as he learns to shift his weight back. 

Ahh I love him so much

I'm still just so over the moon with this stuff. He feels SO good and now, especially after this lesson, I can see the path forward and it's so exciting. Can't wait to continue down this pathway!

Biomechanics Lesson

Yesterday I had my first biomechanics lesson in a while. With both horses going so well and Kate lending me her butterfly saddle and the weather being good (cold, but not raining), I figured it was high time to get some lessons in. 

I decided to ride the pony because TC is on his clicker training and mostly walking/trotting protocol. That ended up being a good thing because as per usual in biomechanics lessons, there was a lot of starting and stopping. I think TC would have been weird about that. 

Such a cute pony

Unfortunately the pony didn't feel great. I took his temp but it was normal, if a little low. Everything else was normal, he was just a bit quieter than usual, who knows why. Maybe I was being paranoid, he is normally pretty chill in the cross ties so maybe I was just nervous about having a lesson. I let the instructor know that he was a little iffy. The ride wasn't hard on him at all (mostly standing and walking) so it was okay. Plus, spoiler alert, he was fine.

The two big things I wanted to deal with were: I wanted to figure out my twisty thing that causes me to *occasionally* feel like I'm falling off the side of horses (I think I just need to catch this on video since it didn't happen yesterday so it was hard to explain) and I wanted to deal with me losing a lot of my organization when horses get behind my leg. 

We didn't quite get to those things necessarily, but I still got some good things to take away. 

So cute

The realignment went well! She said that I had nice internal rotation, tone, and alignment. She only had to change my pelvis a little bit because I was slightly hollow backed. Apparently based on watching me ride, she couldn't tell I was hollow backed until she got her hands on my seat bones. I think I tend to be more hollow backed on the pony than TC, but either way, my core was not engaged enough to hold my pelvis in the correct alignment.

From there, we worked on my bear down. It definitely needs some work so I relayed that to her, but she said that pretty much all riders need to work on their bear down. She put her hands on my stomach and really had me work on it and she was very picky. She said that I tended to push down instead of out. This was brand new for me so I want to think about this more.  

She also said that my breathing wasn't very good. I know this but it's always good to have a reminder! I could NOT make the noises she wanted me to make. She thought I might be shy or resistant to shouting, but I pointed out that we were all alone in the little valley and that I've always had problems projecting my voice. I started to think a little bit more about that. Could it be that these were all related? I'll explore that later. 

He's gotten so fancy

From there, we played with my leg alignment. Again, the internal rotation was not an issue, which was good to hear! I have always been told that I had a bit of a "hunter jumper leg" with my toe out. I've been working hard on that. The biggest issue was that I struggled to engage my abductors, necessary for suction. She had me hold my lower leg away from his side and then resist her push to push them back in. My left side was weak but my right side downright HURT me. So that's something I need to work on! Interesting that TC's harder abduction side is mine too... damn those mirror neurons! 

Other than that, my leg was pretty good I guess! The resistances for keeping my toe up and my lower leg back were quite easy for me. 

We did some riding and worked a bit on my fencing lunge for steering. She thought this might be my issue when it came to me falling off a bit to the side. I'm not sure how much it's going to help me with my falling off feeling, but I'm going to run with it and see what happens!

Glad he was feeling better

Overall I felt like the biomechanics help was great! I got some really specific things to work on in the gym and a few things to think about while riding. My day was all biomechanics all the time because we got word that Mary is potentially coming in February!!!! First time in two years! I'm so excited. I'm definitely going to do the workshop again and might end up doing the clinic with Mary. I'm not sure what horse I'd ride, but that's a problem for future Megan. 

The pony was totally normal by dinner time last night. He was apparently "perky and demanding dinner" according to my mom. Either way, both horses are going to get some time off next week. They each get tomorrow off and then it's going to start raining on Monday and not stop for a while (boo, but we need the rain).