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!

Conformational Sink Hole

On Friday I had my second lesson with the new remote trainer and my first lesson ever using Pivo Meet! I have been so hesitant to try it out but it ended up working out perfectly, we were on the call for almost two hours actually (we are chatty lol). I'm just glad our lesson was in the morning because it was cooler, that was my only concern with it because my phone will often overheat in the middle of the day. I definitely want to invest in a little Pivo Meet station in the corner of the ring where I can put a little umbrella/fan/misters? or something. 

Anyway, my main goal for this lesson was to get some clarification on TC's posture in his work. For our last lesson, we used zoom and I guess the video wasn't so smooth. This time I was hoping the video would be smooth so that she could see his posture change throughout the ride. She only said the video got cloudy once! So that was great. 

Why is my horse so cute about cows?
My theory is that he lived next to them
as a baby horse so he watches them the
same way I'd watch 90s cartoons lol
bovine nostalgia??

This lesson was so good for me mentally. It really called me out on a lot of my own mental hang ups about the sport of dressage, which I will go over eventually, and it also just put into perspective who TC is and how much I am allowed to expect out of him and out of myself as we move up the levels. 

We began with me basically just dumping onto her how frustrating everything has been. Then I picked up the trot and she was super happy with what she saw. I had put my soloshot in the corner (the only downside of Pivo Meet is that you can't record lessons!) so I watched the first few circles of trot and like... he's not as good as he's ever been but it was perfectly acceptable, especially given that Thursday's ride was kind of a disaster. Kate watched the video from Thursday and thought he might be a little sore so hopefully he felt better. He's been galloping around every morning with Rico so maybe he pulled a muscle. Both are seeing the acupuncturist this week, TC because he's in work and Rico because TC's implemented a fitness program for him apparently. 

This day wasn't bad (this is from a different day)

I told her that I felt like I only had a feel of his mouth, not of his entire topline, in my hand. Like if you were to chop his neck out of him and it was just his head floating in space, I'd have no change to what I was feeling. She wanted me to play around a bit with movements and bending exercises to see if there was any way to get that to change. I don't know how much that changed in the lesson, but I will be experimenting with it in the future for sure. I want to figure that out because then I'll just clicker train him giving me more feel. 

I then complained that he was kind of ruining my feel because of shit like this. Like I shouldn't have to clicker train the horse to let me in, I'm a nice rider, he screams at me every day, we are a good team. But I can't trust what I feel anymore because sometimes he feels fucking amazing and then I see the video and I'm like "whoa... seriously? yikes..." and other times he feels... fine.. nothing special, and I see the video and I'm wishing he could look like that all the time. She said no, TC is not ruining my feel, it might feel like that right now but she firmly believes that TC is going to help my feel. After him, there won't be a single horse I struggle on (honestly I'm feeling that already, every other horse has felt pretty straightforward recently). 

She told me something that made me so hopeful, she said "he is going to turn you into the ride you have always wanted to be." She is so unbelievably positive, it's exactly what I need right now. 

Speaking of amazing things she said during that lesson, she told me that TC was a conformational sink hole and I should never blame myself for his postural issues. We will go days, weeks, months, years with no issues and then he'll randomly just struggle with it. If you build even the best foundation on a sink hole, you'll eventually have foundation problems. She said that I'll be nearly constantly going around patching things up in the foundation and then probably also having to restart at times, like we've done this time around. She said that I'll sign up for shows and then his foundation will crumble and I'll scratch. Other times I'll sign up for shows and the foundation will hold and we'll go out and do well. I can't put my self worth on how good TC's foundation is at any given time, just like I wouldn't place my self worth as an architect on how well a building survived being built over a sink hole. 

His neck is staying long rather easily right now but
I am also not asking for too much

From there, she liked how he was doing and so wanted to play with the lateral work. She says the posture should get better as he shifts his weight back so we need to start playing with that. But she says that he will always be the kind of horse who gets short in his neck and drops out from under me. So the plan is to do some lateral work and then stretch and then do some lateral work and then stretch. 

We did some of that and then we got onto the topic of "trick training" the movements. She says that she firmly believes this is what the top trainers do. She read a book about Anky's training methods and, rolkur aside, she read that the trainers would tell people to pull on the inside rein to ride a volte. She was like "no trainer in their right mind would say that, but what I think is that they've simplified the aids a TON for these upper level horses and riders, basically they've trick trained the Grand Prix." 

And that brought me to tell her about my trainer who got me to the Grand Prix who chased me around with a whip and then asked me why I don't have my Gold yet, who told me that "pirouettes are easy, Megan, you just canter, collect the canter, and turn." I've always laughed about that because pirouettes are NOT easy and that is NOT all you do, and chasing Rico around with a whip was NOT going to solve all our problems... but I think the simplification of the upper levels is really helpful for a lot of people. And horses, honestly. It definitely paid off for me in the end with Rico. 

Then we talked about the Grand Prix zig zag, a movement that she says she just can't figure out and I said "that was my easiest movement!" and I told her it was because I didn't use my legs or my seat in the movement, I just steered with my reins. I taught Rico to change leads in a half pass and go the other way if I swapped the bend. She thought that was hilarious (especially because it drove my trainer at the time NUTS "don't let him change when you straighten him!" but why not?) Trick training. My easiest movement and the one I walked out of the ring confident I'd earned an eight... I trick trained that movement. Interesting. 

Trick train your animals - USDF Gold Medalist

So we looked back to TC. Is there a way to trick train TC to do dressage? Absolutely. How about simplify the aids for the movements so much that I have all my aids available to help him in his basics? Do it. So we played with the shoulder-in to half pass. Can I sit to the outside in the shoulder-in and then train him to half pass by shifting my weight to the inside. Sit inside = half pass, sit outside = shoulder-in. That's it. That's the aid. It's not about my legs or my seat bones or my reins or figuring out which lateral work gods to pray to at each given moment. It's just a weight shift. 

That would mean that all my other aids will be used to keep him connected, to ride his neck longer, to keep his back up to keep him collected, you know. Sit inside = half pass; sit outside = shoulder in; sit middle = go straight; everything else = connection, throughness, smiling at the judge so they know that I'm good at dressage and don't hate it, collection, impulsion, contemplating what to cook for dinner. 

It will obviously take time, but one of the ways I can start doing it now is just repetition at the walk. Teach him the weight aids. 

This brings me back to this post about the baseline gaits and how I preached about simplifying the basics so much so you can just focus on the movements. Well, I guess in this stage of our time together (why? No idea still), TC is teaching me how to do it the opposite way. I will have baseline movements and then use my aids to help him through the basics. Could you teach a horse, maybe a horse who is better built for the sport, to simplify both the basics and the movements? Is that what our top riders do? Is that the secret to getting an 80% at the Grand Prix?

Sorry for all the walk work we are about to do, buddy

The other big thing we did was a TON of stretching work. She wants him to become a "stretching monster" like nearly constantly asking me if he can stretch. The whole time during a test she wants him being like "can I stretch?" and me saying "not yet just hold on for a moment" throughout. 

In order to do that, we need to stretch him down a TON so that he knows it's a thing that is likely to happen nearly constantly. Every movement is followed by a stretchy circle. This exercise led us to talk about how hilarious it would be to throw in stretchy trot in upper level freestyles. We talked about what a stretch circle being required at the upper levels would mean for riders and it was fun to think about. I also had this moment of imagining my warm up for TC's future PSG debut. One of my students just earned her USDF Silver medal, I warmed her up and everyone (including her) was going around doing fancy movements. But there I'd be doing a huge amount of stretchy trot and then heading into the ring like "I'll pick him up later" lol, I love that. 

Anyway, once he's so used to stretching that he becomes demanding about it, that's when I know I've got it right. The plan is to basically ride through the movements preserving the connection as best as possible but KNOWING that he will retract slowly over time due to his conformational sink hole and that is NOT my fault. Then on the short sides, let him out a few inches to stretch before starting the next movement.

Such a cute pony

I love this plan and am excited to get started. I definitely want to take weekly lessons with her for a while. I'm going to start clicker training movements based on weight shifting (she literally said she taught her horse to do extended trot based on how she was breathing, this is exactly the kind of outside the box thinking I need in my life) and various other oversimplified cues. And turn him into a stretching monster. And we just start chipping away at everything we stopped working on last year. 

Because he's still not showing the ideal posture just yet, I'm also going to chase down any physical reasons for why he might not be able to give me that. I feel like it was better in June and July than it is now. Is it actually that he hates this saddle? Maybe. Is it that he hasn't seen his acupuncturist in a while? Also maybe. Is it that he hasn't seen his PT in a while? Yes, maybe. Or maybe he's been in a low grade amount of pain for a while? Well, we'll know later because he's going on prevocox this week to see if he improves. 

Or maybe there is no ideal posture and my mental game is super off. That's a definite possibility! 

Game Changer

So I've been using my pivo quite a bit when I can, unfortunately it's been raining so the arena has been too busy to use it, but I've really enjoyed it! They've made a lot of changes to the software and it definitely doesn't lose me as much as it used to. 

Pivo recording my lesson last week

One thing I haven't done is tested Pivo Meet in quite a while. Last I checked, it required you to give the trainer permission to take control over the camera every time and it loses me enough where that's a deal breaker for remote lessons.  

I keep meaning to bring my Pivo home to test it out, for like weeks, and I finally did this weekend. 

I set it up on my kitchen table and joined on my laptop, I made it track my face and I'm sure the SO was wondering wtf I was doing as I swayed back and forth. At first I couldn't get it working because I had the settings wrong, then I clicked on the wrong link, and then I finally got it right!

And finally, FINALLY it worked! As the instructor, you can take over the pivo and turn it left and right and zoom in and out without asking the rider! 

Can't wait to have lessons out here!

I didn't test out the audio though... I just went on my merry way. 

I texted the SO during the day on Monday to see if he could last minute test it on the horse and he wasn't available, so I bothered my mom. She was free and I sent her the link and she clicked on it and I could see her and she could see me! I definitely couldn't hear her though, but she could hear me. 

I walked and trotted around and chatted to my mom to see how the video quality was and to see whether she could hear me from across the covered arena. I got back to the video and she mimed to me that I was a chatterbox and then called my dad in to laugh at me and watch me trot around too. When I got back to the camera, my dad was holding his fingers up like bunny ears behind my mom's head and my mom was miming weird shit to me. So I hung up on them and then called her to find out how it was. 

She said it only got a little blurry once (and their internet is very slow so it could easily be them) and that she wanted the camera up a little higher for zooming in because I guess when she zoomed in, it cut off my head. Other than that though, she said it was great! And this was in the covered arena too! I am hoping that the dressage court (which is outside) is even better. But that'll be closed for a couple of weeks. 

Hopefully being in the dressage court is even better

So the audio is my project today with the SO who thinks he can figure it out for me. If it doesn't work, I'll just have to use a second phone to call the instructor on, and I think for the first few lessons, I'll try to have the SO there to troubleshoot anyway so I can use his phone if necessary. 

I'm glad my parents had such a ridiculous time making fun of me while they helped me test out the pivo. Definitely having the SO help next time... although he will definitely make fun of me as well. Clowns, I'm surrounded by them, including my horse who was constantly trying to knock down the Pivo. 

Overall I'm SO impressed!! I can't wait to take an actual lesson. I have NO idea who I'm going to try riding with first, I need to pick someone who is a bit techy, has good internet, and has time to waste (I mean, I'll obviously pay the person). I think I want to ask trainer friend, although she is very busy so I'll feel bad if it doesn't work out. Maybe during her lunch break?? 

An Abundance of Robot Cameras

I always said that I wish I had the money to pay someone to follow me around on my horse videoing me the whole time. And now that technology has caught up with this vision, I have a lot of robot cameras following me around.

Soloshot

I bought my Soloshot 3 in August 2018, it was on sale (it's like $800 now! I looked it up in my 2018 budget and I paid $427.93 for it, including tax and shipping) and much cheaper than the only other option at the time (the Pixio, especially because I don't/didn't have a video camera). I've gotten a lot out of it over the last two years and still really love using it. My main complaints are that it's a bit unreliable, it's hard to get videos onto my phone for IG, I can't do remote lessons with it, the battery isn't the best anymore, and I can't use it indoors despite them promising over and over again that they were going to get that done.

When I realized I wanted more lessons than one a month back in early April, I looked up what it was going to take. I could haul to Tanya's... it's probably a 2+ hour haul one way, meaning I'd have to go on a weekend only (and coordinate her show and clinic schedule with my show and clinic schedule) and probably stay overnight. Then the Pixem came out, and without needing the video camera, it was way more affordable, like, still expensive obviously, just not as bad as it was. But, all it'd take is a single clinic for me not to be able to do, plus the gas money and wear/tear on my rig, to make getting the Pixem worth it. So I ordered it. It was backordered, so I waited several months and it finally arrived in early July.

Pixem

I started seeing the Pivo everywhere and it looked really cute! I ended up buying it just on a whim before the Pixem arrived. Even if it didn't work at my busy barn, I'd love to have something super portable to have at the ranch when I'm riding horses there. And omg when my niece starts riding, it'll be so great to have while I'm teaching her.

So, that's how I ended up with three cameras. I feel really weirdly guilty about it, so I need to say this: I can't remember the last saddle pad I bought, I have only taken one lesson a month for YEARS until very recently, and I don't drink alcohol (so therefore never spend $8+ a drink at a bar) or go on vacations other than camping. I haven't even been out of the country as an adult. Different people spend money on different things, apparently robot cameras are my weakness. Okay, enough explanations.

Pivo

Here's my list of pros and cons for each.

Soloshot 3
Price: ~ $800 (I paid far less because apparently it was on a major sale)

Pros:
- doesn't take too long to set up
- only have to charge the one device
- can work on the edge of the arena
- lots of range, can follow you when you're very far away
- can work on hills (it will go up and down, not just side to side)

Cons:
- only works outside
- video quality isn't great
- tricky to get video onto my phone
- sometimes videos trees/loses you way easier than the Pixem
- takes a long time to charge
- doesn't hold a charge that well
- no ability to do live lessons
- terrible customer service

Soloshot

Pixem (I bought it here)
Price: ~ $900 including shipping (I got a discount, the SO works at a company that infuriatingly gives him a lot of discounts)

Pros:
- works inside and outside
- extremely accurate
- video is in phone (so therefore phone determines quality, and I have a decent phone)
- remote lessons are possible
- can work on the edge of the arena

Cons:
- takes a while to set up
- doesn't have a ton of range (fine for a dressage court though)
- everything needs to charge (beacons, watch, camera, phone)
- my phone isn't always charged all the way
- can't listen to music/etc while it is videoing
- remote lessons need either a ceecoach or a second phone

Pixem

Pivo Silver
Price: $150 shipped (I paid that amount)

Pros:
- super fast to set up
- great customer service
- way cheaper than everything
- video is in phone (so therefore phone determines quality, and I have a decent phone)
- works with software so it theoretically should get better over time (it already has been improved)
- quick charging, I can just charge it a bit at the barn each day (vs bringing it home)

Cons:
- struggles with multiple horses
- works best in the middle of the ring (disruptive)
- is definitely the worst at following you of the three
- not reliable enough for remote lessons
- my phone isn't always charged all the way
- can't listen to music/etc while it is videoing

FYI, none of them come with a tripod, so I picked one up at Best Buy. That one lives at the barn.

Pivo, I was right at the edge of the screen lol

So my thoughts are: if you just want something fun to snag some videos of you while you ride mostly on your own, grab the Pivo. If you want remote lessons or if you only ride indoors or if money isn't a big deal, get the Pixem. If you mostly ride outside and want something more accurate than the Pivo but without the price point of the Pixem (though man they're about the same price now), get the Soloshot.

As for now, I'm keeping all of mine. I know it's really overkill, but I have a good reason to hoard the cameras for now. The Pixem is great for remote lessons and for videoing accurately in the covered arena during the winter when we're stuck in there, but it takes a long time to set up and is just generally more of a pain in the ass to lug around, plus I fuck it up frequently unfortunately. The Pivo is super fast to set up and I get videos right on my phone that I can check as I'm riding (I LOVE that), but it sucks in group settings so I'm looking forward to using it when I barely have time in the mornings because it's fast and I'm basically guaranteed to be alone riding that early. I can also easily bring it to my parents' place to play with their horses with. The Soloshot doesn't work inside and doesn't do live video, but it's great for a quick setup in a busy outdoor arena where I don't want to take the time to set up beacons and when the Pivo is going to get confused.

Despite the overkill, neither the Pivo nor the Soloshot are worth enough to sell anyway right now, I think my plan is to keep them long enough to know which one(s) I find the most value in and then decide later.

But hopefully this post helps people figure out which one is best for them! Even if it makes me feel like I have a problem.