Settling In

Due to the EHV-1 outbreak in the area, we are all kind of locked down for a while, meaning that I won't be taking lessons or hauling out anywhere. I just got an email on Monday night that the show I was signed up for this weekend was canceled due to the outbreak. 

It's honestly a relief and means I don't have to forfeit the entry that I was going to have to if I had decided to go to the show. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to though, especially given that my horse is still learning to relax at his new home barn and I hadn't even gotten around to test riding when I actually could (if we stay long term, I will be finding a place to haul into that has a court for sure!). 

More positive tension at the ranch = more thoracic
sling engagement, I think we're onto something here!

With the show off the table, my main goal continues to be getting TC more comfortable at the ranch. He is getting better every single day and we actually had a FABULOUS ride yesterday!

He moved Thursday and I rode him later that day, then rode Friday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Today, I'm going to give him a day off. He does best with two dedicated dressage days, one cavalletti day, one trail ride day, and one stretchy day, plus two days off. Basically, the less you ride the horse, the better he goes (I always tell people I should ignore him for 3-4 years and then take him out at the GP). But not when he's nervous. All days are now stretchy dressage days except his days off until he settles in and then we'll start back on his schedule. 

Looking pretty good in those working gaits!

He was okay on Thursday with his nerves. I hand walked him to the arena, walked him around it using the clicker to click for any kind of relaxation (head down, blowing nose, ears on me vs the neighbor cows, etc), then we got on and I just walked, trotted, and cantered around on the same circle at the far end of the arena. He was concerned about the horses not being nearby the ring, my dad dragging my niece around in her wagon, the dog running around, and the gate opening and closing. But really no antics, just lots of tension. At the end of the ride, I managed to ride him back into the barn and he seemed more okay with the activity when he was out of the arena. 

Friday was much better, I actually rode him to the arena and he was much quicker to stretch forward and downward at all three gaits. I even dropped one hand off the rein and pretended to be a western rider at the canter! He is decidedly not a western pleasure horse though. He was still wavering back and forth between stretching and blowing (which I kept clicking for) and then getting tense and scooting a bit with his neck tight. At the end, we rode down the road a little bit and he saw horses in the pastures by the boarding facility next door and I think that calmed him down. By the time we came back to the barn, he was pretty happy. 

That gave me the confidence to not ride him Saturday, give him a day to hang out in his paddock with the other horses and not be asked to do anything. He loves his job and he loves me, but I knew that he was struggling to be a good boy those two rides and wanted him to be able to go a day without having to try so hard. Just hang out, get used to the routine, play with Riot, watch the cows, and so on. 

Good boy

Sunday was a big day for him as my brother, SIL, my niece, and my SO all came down to the ranch to hang out during the day and my parents were prepping to have two friends over for a BBQ later in the day (now that everyone is vaccinated, they're starting to socialize outdoors again, yay). 

For TC, that meant dealing with: my brother and SO going out on a bike ride (so opening the gate, riding out on bikes, and closing the gate); my niece being pushed in the swing in the front yard and then being dragged around in her wagon; someone throwing a ball for the dog, her running to get it and bring it back, and then barking to get the ball thrown again; my dad cooking in the side yard and walking in and out of the house; my parents' friends arriving in their car (gate opening and closing again); and everyone chatting and waving at each other from afar. 

It was a lot for him! He definitely wasn't as good on Sunday as he was on Friday, but that was expected after a day off and lots of activity. Again, I clicked for relaxation and gave him the benefit of the doubt when he wanted to stop and stare at everything going on. He scooted and bucked a few times and his transitions were... more exciting than I'd appreciate. But we honestly got a lot of good work done and we walked down the road and back both before and after the ride. 

At the end, he walked right through the crowd of people and stood while four people (my mom, her friend, my brother, and my niece) came up to pet him and the dog ran over to lick his face and get groomed by him. He honestly loved it! He then walked through all the noise and people and wagons/picnic tables/swings/etc in the front yard to get back to the barn, not spooking once. 

He's an emotional horse and because he's big, his nerves can make him seem like a LOT when they come out, but at the end of the day, I really trust him. He never means to do anything bad, he just gets overwhelmed with feelings about things, he gets trigger stacked easily. I think Sunday really tested our relationship and on the other side, well... 

High alert due to the gate

Monday he was an absolute dream. Stood perfectly still/relaxed in the cross ties even without the clicker (I've been clicking for not standing at the front of the cross ties pawing). He walked confidently down the road further than we've gone before. He has made friends with one of the pasture horses (from afar, EHV-1 and all) so that horse trotted up and down the fence while he quietly walked by on a loose rein. He dealt with cows and barking dogs no problem. 

Walked quietly back to the arena where we had a FABULOUS ride, totally connected and stretching to contact the whole time. No spooking, no startling, no scooting, no bucking, very limited tension mostly due to the neighbor cows wandering up the hill behind us. That tension only led to him stopping to stare at them and whinnying a few times. 

Then we went back to the barn where he hung out in the cross ties alone for a bit and then got hosed down while being ground tied to graze behind the barn (I'm going to make him a makeshift turnout there so he can graze every day). Then he quietly watched as I rebuilt his fence to give him more room in his paddock (that involved a lot of wire being moved around), and then when I gave him more space, he just walked around nibbling bits of grass and kept coming up to me with his ears pressed all the way forward as if to say thank you for the extra room. 

Tuesday was much the same and we even went down the access road and he tried to cross the busy road heading toward the winery! In the arena we had our best ride yet. 

He's pretty cool

We still have a ways to go, because I want to get him comfortable there to the point where I can start schooling the Third level stuff again. At this point, I think the added pressure of having to be in his collected paces and doing movements and all that is going to be too much. Until I can ride a walk to canter transition without wondering if it's going to land me in space, I think we'll stick to the stretching protocol. But honestly, we aren't far out! 

I'm so proud of him for handling this. It's been such a freaking journey with this horse for the last six years. I think the biggest thing I've learned with him/from him is that sometimes things just take time and that we only hurt ourselves/each other when we rush things. It reminds me a lot of Warwick Schiller's podcast with Nahshon Cook that my friends recommended to me. In the episode, Nahshon spoke about a lot of really powerful things with our relationship with horses and it was really impressive, so definitely give it a listen. But one of the things that sat with me was a somewhat passing comment he mentioned about how he tries to "trust life" and in that moment I realized that I am TERRIBLE AT THIS.

I should probably dedicate a whole post to talking about that because it really has been a lifechanging thing for me, a typical type-A nutter butter, to tell myself "trust life" whenever I start to worry about stuff. Like trust life, Megan, things are going to be okay. And sometimes things that feel very not okay lead to things that feel more than okay so it's all okay. This move and the way things went in yesterday's ride make me almost grateful it happened the way it did. Hopefully this experience will make me better at trusting life. 

Some Goddamn Shoulder-In

Tuesday's ride this week wasn't very good. TC only settled at the very end of our ride and I had a lot of frustration about that. It's annoying to be doubling my barn time to have only marginally better rides at the ranch. It's not like I could actually work on anything. I texted my friends "I just want to do some goddamn shoulder-in!"

He's so cute! And so weirdly proportioned, but I try to focus
on the cuteness.

I started thinking about actually moving TC now, not having to do this constantly-hauling-out shit. I decided to reach out to my trainer's barn, but they are full for this month but may have room in early August. If that's the case, I'll give thirty days on July 1st and then leave in early August to go either to my trainer's barn, my old barn, or another local barn (visiting two this weekend and checking in with a couple more). I can do this for a month but maybe not much longer, I'm so tired already!

After our tough ride on Tuesday and finding out I couldn't just drive my horse over to my trainer's barn tomorrow, on Thursday I came out wanting so desperately to have a good ride. I came up with several solutions. First, I didn't let him canter in both directions on the longe line. He gets zippy after canter work, so I just had him canter to the right, then we switched directions and I just trotted him, focusing on getting him to quiet down after the canter. Then got on. I think this made a big difference.

Second, I was ON it with the clicker at the walk making sure that he took a deep breath and chilled out before trotting. I know I'm going to hate riding the zippy trot, so I'm not trotting until the walk settles. I decided if I couldn't get it to settle, I'd just longe him and take him home.

I did get the walk to settle and when we picked up the trot, he was better. Not perfect. I still feel like I have to be really careful with my aids to keep him contained, but I was able to do more than just sit on one circle telling him to relax.

Love this bonnet, even if it just looks cute, I
do wish I had gotten it in blue, I think the gray
is too close in color to his own color right now

So we did some shoulder-in! It feels really good, well, as good as it can feel while posting. I can't quite sit his trot yet at the ranch (we worked on it on Thursday) because he's still a bit rigid in his back when I'm on him, but it was fun to have some things to work on off the circle.

We also touched on the medium trot and it's quite weak right now. I forgot that he gets super out behind with it so I rode it badly a few times before remembering what we were working on. The last one felt pretty good and much more under himself. The key is to keep it at like 60% of what he is capable of because any more and he starts flinging his front end about.

The canter work felt amazing. It's my main complaint at my trainer's barn, he's not forward enough in canter and when that happens, he bucks. On Thursday, I had the ideal combination of forward but rideable. I wanted to do some counter canter work to see how that was developing but damn is it hard to work on counter canter in such a small space... so I'll have to work that out. How on earth did Rico and I do anything productive in there?? Rico is a unicorn, that's how.

So instead, we did a lot of work on the long sides, making sure that he stayed straight and playing with square turns. The connection felt great and I kept the power contained pretty well, only a couple of times did he surge, but it was in control, he just wanted to offer me medium canter and instead of being quick to recycle that back to collection, I was slow with my half halt and we covered a LOT of ground for a step or two. Oops.

Clicker training is amazing, I don't know if I will ever use
side reins or a chambon or anything ever again lol

It was so nice to have a good ride! And to ride some goddamn shoulder-in and other movements. It gave me confidence knowing that the training is still there and I feel excited to hopefully be able to start working on some of these things.

Today I have a lesson with Tracey again, I'm expecting it to be a bit more of the same - getting my body under control and working on the connection. I'm excited for that though, hopefully both TC and I can get our shit together and start making progress again.

Tone at the Bottom

Finally on Thursday I had a normal ride on TC, it was so fun! I'm not sure what got into him this week but I think he just needed to get it out of his system with a lot of cantering on Wednesday. Who knows.

I could tell TC was feeling quiet when I was able to do the girth up almost all the way upon walking out of the barn. I hopped on him at the mounting block at the top of the arena and walked down through the stream each way before going into the covered arena. This time, there was only one semi-private lesson going on and one person hacking. Two lessons is a bit tough to navigate around, but one is super doable, especially when TC is all chill like.

It was nice to have a break in the rain!

We finally got to warm up on a longer rein, getting him to stretch over his back. My main concern recently is the corkscrew of course, and I could really feel it tracking right. Not only does it feel like we're falling over the right shoulder, in the stretch, he wants to curl and get too light in it. Clearly he doesn't feel comfortable stretching over his back and into the bridle evenly in that direction.

After stretching, I played with a few figure-8s and spiraling in and out. This was mostly focusing on the corkscrew, which I think I've talked about a lot. But I feel like we're making decent progress with it.

I've been thinking a lot about where he is at, and Thursday I focused more on where I was at. I am at the root of the problem of course. So I thought about engaging my right upper inner thigh, my left oblique, drawing my left thigh off of him, putting my left calf on him, lifting with my right calf, and just thinking about being more present on the right side of his body. We had some amazing work to the left, where I felt like I could really get my left calf on him to engage his left hind leg. And we could turn! And his trot got loftier! Magic.

From there, I went sitting and worked on transitions. I think if Tanya had one main complaint about us, it's that our transitions are the fucking worst. I'm not sure what it is about this horse and changing gaits, but it's an ordeal for him. It's either very abrupt and off the bit, or it takes forever but he stays round. The trot to walk is probably the worst, but trot to canter and walk to canter are also questionable.

Wandering after the crazy rainstorm on Wednesday

I think part of it has to do with me losing tone in transitions, something I've also been accused of doing at the bottom of push-ups and squats. Hrm. The other part I think is me overriding it and overthinking it. So I focused on maintaining my tone (especially in that damn left oblique which continues to plague me) and not letting him drop into walk by dropping my calf off of him and clamping with my thigh. It made a huge difference!


I took that into the canter work and did a little spiral in and out before playing with a couple of canter to walk transitions. He's pretty good at these, though I do feel like there's still a bit of a black box moment where there's some vacancy in his rideability in the transition. So like I'll ride him in the canter I want him to ride in, and sometimes the transition is amazing. Other times... it's still clean in that there are no trot steps and balanced in that he doesn't transition into a less balanced walk or anything, but the throughness could be better. It's a 6.5 rather than an 8. We can do 8, so let's do 8.

But I constantly have this realization in this transition that he doesn't need to do a million of them to get them good, he knows how to do them right, what he needs is to get really comfortable in the collected canter, in the really accessible place. THAT is the issue with this transition, it has nothing to do with the transition and everything to do with the canter.

Lots of water but it drains well

We ended with even more stretching, where he was way better in it to the right. I was glad to see that!

Today I head to Sacramento for the day, so TC gets the day off (and shoes!) and then I'll be back on him for the weekend. I have an email into a new trainer about riding with her on Monday, but that might not happen, we'll see.

I think TC and I are hanging in there without lessons, but I am eager to get another lesson just because I like them!

Holding It Together

Wednesday's ride was better but still not completely back to normal. TC was quieter in the cross ties, I could legit get my girth tight enough to ride him in what I consider a normal amount of time to tighten it, and he walked quietly down to the arena with all of his feet landing in the correct rhythm and on the ground itself.

He was still a bit on edge riding him, I think he's still adjusting to such a busy training barn. And even busy to describe the arena on Wednesday is laughable. There were four people, two in a lesson at one end, one in a lesson at the other (there wasn't much space in between), and one person riding around the private lesson. Still, it had him a little amped.

Walked through this little stream a few times

I started trotting him around in the ugly carriage trot that he handed me the day before too, and eventually I just cantered him. Around and around we went on the circle until he started to wear himself out a bit.

I had a funny conversation with the other rider riding on her own. She said "he looks so fat and lazy, I didn't realize he would be like this" and I explained that he's normally way quieter than this, that he's been having a rough week with the weather, but that yes, he can be quite buzzy. She told me that it looked like I had really strong abs, which was such a nice compliment (I think). He does take a lot of stabilization and without crossfit this year, I'd have probably already come off of him this winter. It made me feel good (and then bad because I haven't found a crossfit here yet ugh).

He did calm down though and we had some really great work.

His trot in that arena feels especially amazing, he loves the footing I think. I was able to ride him in shoulder-fore each way, working to get him to take more weight with his left hind leg and untwist himself. It was tricky to the right, but we got a really good feeling left. I think Tanya and Tracey (whoever I see first) are going to both think I'm riding him too over the ground. But to be honest, if he's willing to go from buzzy to loose but maybe a little out behind, I don't care how big his trot gets. I can compress it back to normal later.

Tuesday night my coworkers and I went to this really cool
restaurant that you take a trolley down to!

At the canter, after being kind of a tense mess of a horse, he settled into a right lead canter that I just adore. It's so soft and malleable, like I could put him anywhere. It still feels a biiit precarious, where I need to really make sure that I'm riding first from my seat because I can cause it to come crashing down if I don't. But it feels so good! I can add horse to it without losing him mentally it seems like.

The left lead IS getting better. First of all, the shoulder-fore is helping a ton to straighten him out and get him more steerable that way. I feel like I can really ride the outside of him and draw him in with my left thigh. It's definitely not yet the same quality of the canter to the right, as it's even more precarious, but it is getting so much more rideable.

No fucks given about water on the GROUND,
just when it falls from the sky

We actually got to end with some stretchy trot, which was so nice! Given that this has been a hard week for him, getting to feel him take a breath and stretch down was great. Hopefully today he's 100% back to normal but we'll see, the storm may make him really nervous. I'm thinking of bringing a rain sheet out to see if he wants to wear that as I'm wondering if he's afraid of his stall so doesn't want to stay in there when it's raining, he's always quite wet when I come to see him at this barn.

Developing Quickness (via Dreamy Trot Destruction)

Urgency is not something that exists in TC's world. It's not that he's lazy or unresponsive. He is very enthusiastic about doing the right thing, he wants to work for his rider, he responds to all of my aids. It's easy to classify him as a lazy, unresponsive horse because of his slow response time. But I'm reluctant to do so because I've had a lazy unresponsive horse (Rico) and they are very different horses.

Rico's spirit animal

I would call TC methodical. He wants to truly understand something and do it very carefully. When you ask him to trot, he immediately responds by setting himself up (in his own way, sometimes this isn't what I want though haha) and then, only when he is totally prepared does he actually trot. That set up and execution is slow, but he responds (or starts to respond) quickly. When you ask him to turn on the forehand, he immediately responds. But he responds by slowly picking up his inside hind leg, carefully placing it under his body, then slowly picking up his outside hind leg and placing it carefully to the outside.

The difficulty of training him comes not from his level of responsiveness, it comes from the lack of urgency. He seems to be a perfectionist (although an often misdirected one, I think I know someone like that...). He wants to take his time to get it right.

Rico, on the other hand would just say no. Ask him to trot and he sucks back against your leg. There is no set up, there is nothing careful about it. He says no thanks, I'd rather not. Ask him to leg yield (as a young horse at least) and you get a brick wall of abdomen against your leg. He says NO SIDEWAYS SHUFFLING.

So do I want more responsiveness from TC? Suuure, I mean horses can always be more responsive (vs reactive- horses should not be reactive). I want him hanging on my every word, already set up for his leg yields and his transitions before I ask for them so he can respond easily. What I want most though, is a little bit of urgency. Not tension, just that he feels like there's a time limit. I worked on this on Tuesday.

Like this but more urgent off the aids

The biggest thing I discovered in my ride on Tuesday was that my aids slow down with him. I expect him to be slow off the aid so I slow my aids down to meet him. Long leg aids, long rein aids. The number of seconds that my leg is on him is way too many. If I want him to think that this is urgent, I need to make sure I'm riding it as such.

The next thing I did was put a bit of tension back into my seat. I'm really good at making horses a bit hot, but I've valued relaxation over TC's topline so much that I had to calm my ass down a bit. Time to bring fire ass back, which is I think what my BFF called it years ago when she couldn't ride a horse I had been riding (and her old horse, who she rode with hammerhead spurs, tried to murder me because I lit him up so much).

So I sat with a little more urgency, used quicker aids, used shorter quicker taps with the whip... and it worked okay. I did some leg yields like this and TC got a lot of praise when he was quicker. The turns on the forehand were really good, though totally off the bit. We ended with some walk-trot transitions, which blew TC's poor little mind. I would ask once for the trot, then once as I noticed that his brain was starting to acknowledge the aid, I tapped him to say "hurry up!"

Weeee

TC thought that meant GO REALLY FAST so off we went in a HUGE trot. I had to actually pull on him to get him back to walk. Frustration. My once dreamy quiet responsive trot was now this ugly charging downhill thing.

He just didn't understand, poor guy. I worked hard to keep it all very positive. He got a lot of praise. He did get better about it, but we never really got what I had wanted- quicker to the aids but remaining relaxed. It's good to know that we have access to both, we just need to work on it at the same time.

Since TC moves so soon, it's unlikely that I'll be working on this for a bit. He's going to need some adjustment time. I'm planning on doing some ground work, longeing, and riding with the focus on relaxation and building what we had at his current barn back up.

Hello new paddock! See you this weekend

I'm a little stressed about the move, primarily because I desperately want to like this barn (due to the affordability and larger paddocks than every other barn that has openings), but it's so different from what I'm used to. It's mostly western and very low key, so I'm not sure how the people are going to be, how well the footing is going to be maintained, and all that. My current barn is mostly western and the footing isn't the greatest and I'm totally fine... but it's always easier to accept faults in things that are known rather than unknown.

Can I also say that I was NOT in a good mood for the ride on Tuesday (the ride I'm describing) and that this horse is just so accommodating. I was seriously feeling like shit by the time I got on him just because of reasons and he was SO sweet. He stuck his nose in my arms while I was tacking him up and he listened when I got annoyed at his normal baby shuffling and told him to stand still. He did everything I asked undersaddle and just generally was a breath of fresh air after a frustrating day. I know a certain bay horse who would have taken advantage of me a bit. It reminded me of what Lauren wrote earlier this week and I'm just so grateful for this little horse's brain.

Introducing Straightness

I've added almost ten pages to my thesis since I last complained about it, which means that I'm closing in on 30 pages. Most of it is still notes, and sure, one of the pages was a table of contents with hyperlinks because this mother fucker is getting hard to navigate, and yeah another one of the pages is a second page of references (which will be expanded even more soon), but STILL. probably fifty pages left or so, too bad I'm not only going for page count.

Before even touching it today, I headed out to the barn (and am writing this blog post... and I might go make food... and don't I need a new saddle pad? From a tack store about two hours away? Wasn't I supposed to be half way to Canada by today? Thesis may need to wait).

Enjoy more pictures from our last ride- I can't remember/am too
lazy to go see what I posted last post so sorry about repeats

The baby horse had made me pretty happy by giving me about 80% of his home awesomeness at the neighbor's arena last time I rode so I had high hopes for today.

Once again, I was disgustingly looking forward to riding there because of how energetic he is when we're there. Just two weeks ago I felt such dread thinking about riding there.

We started at home again. He was still so sticky and fussy in the bridle so I ended up dropping the reins and just getting him to go forward without any restrictions. After he experienced life without connection, he realized that I was actually there trying to help him and started stretching into contact. We had a couple of nice loops around at trot and canter, then headed out.

He's starting to look more steel gray than black, yay

I opted for more walk work than usual when we got to the neighbor's because I wanted to get him stretching down again. He's been so reluctant to let go of the tension in the base of his neck. We got a REALLY nice stretchy walk all the way around the arena both directions before heading into trot. I was so glad that he was quiet enough to actually do walk work for once- normally we get over there and he starts screaming (screaming still present today though, he is so shrill) and ends up getting himself all in a tither before I let him trot it out.

Into trot, he was perfect. Not 80% of what we get at home, this was 95%! Still ever so slightly tense, but I could attribute that to his loss of confidence over the last week rather than us riding at the neighbor's place.

So we did a lot of figures, serpentines, figure-8s, some spiraling in and out. He was great through all of that so we did some trot leg yields (they're bad but they're good enough to be referred to as leg yields) and actually managed a shoulder-in in trot to the left!

Such a good baby

I also started playing with working on the straightness and throughness in the walk-trot transitions. He tends to wiggle and kind of throw himself into trot, and I thought this would be a good way of both a) cleaning up the transition and b) getting him to engage his hind end where it's HIS idea rather than me slowing him down so much.

At first he was confused, but he's so energetic over there that he wanted to trot so he figured it out quickly. None of them were perfect, but there were a few that let me see where they were heading.

Once again, we cantered, and this time we cantered for a long while. I'm starting to put more pressure on him to be round, even if it's not necessarily perfectly correct, at the canter. It's been about four or five months since he started cantering undersaddle, so I think it's time to start cracking down on this concept. He readily accepts contact to the right, but the left is harder for him. I'm primarily just asking him to bend more, and sliding the bit a tiny bit on the inside rein- enough to get a response but not so much to throw him off balance since I do like the balance he brings in the canter.

One day he will relax the base of his neck!

One of the main issues I'm now realizing that we have is straightness. I'm getting paranoid because it feels quite pronounced (although when I watch videos, it isn't as obvious) and I know that crookedness can be caused by a weak hind leg which can be caused by hock spurs or arthritis or whatever other problems may arise that would cause him to fail the vet check and me to lose him.

He essentially falls over his left shoulder all the time. It makes him easy to turn to the left but easy to bend to the right. He struggles to pick up the left shoulder, hence why the left lead canter is better than the right lead- it forces him to pick up that shoulder.

It's bad enough where I notice it while picking his feet- he won't let me pick his left foot for very long before he starts leaning backwards so I drop it or trying to paw it out of my hand. I think normally I wouldn't have noticed that it was specific to one foot (because let's face it, picking feet is an uphill battle with a horse that doesn't stand still while tied and paws like it's his meaning in life) but I struggled a LOT to get him to pick up his left shoulder while riding today so was sensitized to it.

He's so fun

I don't know whether his crookedness is:
a.) totally normal in young horses and will go away soon if I make it a priority in his work

b.) a product of my own crookedness (which makes no sense because Rico was crooked in the OTHER way so you'd think I would encourage horses to be that kind of crooked)

c.) not normal in young horses and indicative of a problem or future problem in his right hind (will definitely tell the vet at his vet check and flex/x-ray his right hock)

d.) mostly all in my head because I'm in tune to riding 3rd level + horses right now who are very straight so the slightest bit of crookedness is very obvious to me while someone else who is not as sensitized to it wouldn't notice or care

So I'm obviously thinking that it's because he's lame and simultaneously because I'm crooked too. Because why would I think that it's just normal for even a young horse to be one sided or that I'm now a good enough rider to feel exactly what is going on under me?


After careful analysis, I helped him out a bit by working on bend and a little haunches in to the left and getting him better connected on the left rein to the right. He definitely improved, and I think it will get better with time. Unless, you know, his right hind leg simply falls OFF of his body.

We walked back to the barn the long way down the trail by the busy road and the whole time, he was on a loose rein! What a grown up baby :)

Also very grown up cantering at a place that isn't his home arena

This weekend is a relaxed one and next weekend is a potential second show for us. But I'm not sure if it's something I want to do or if I just want to go to school. I have until midweek to decide!

Addressing Off Property Behavior

Yesterday I graduated from my MA program! Woohoo! It's a little less woohoo though, because I do still have my thesis to finish. But I'm taking today off. Well. Damnit. Okay I'm at least taking the time to write this post and am writing the thesis while watching Netflix so that counts as a day off, right?

Woo graduation! I fixed my crooked cap after this picture :)

I did get a chance to get little TC out this morning. The last couple of times I've ridden him (Mon/Tues this week), I've been worried about his feet. All of his feet were chipping pretty badly but his right front had two big chips which were situated next to each other so there was a bit of hoof wall sticking out. If that had chipped, he would have for sure been lame. Yikes! So we thought he may need shoes.

Today (Fri- after Wed/Thur off because I was too worried to ride him) the farrier came out and it turns out that he didn't need shoes but if he started chipping again, we'd consider it- basically on a cycle-by-cycle basis. His feet looked great when I came out this afternoon!

His topline is improving, right?!

Unamused by my picture taking

Finally relaxed and I can get something like a conformation shot

With his feet okay and me having a fair amount of time to kill at the barn, I decided to tackle the neighbor's arena again. If you remember, he's been just terrible over there (tense, retracted neck, no steering, bolting, spooking, winnying, etc) while being McDreamy (watching Gray's Anatomy, don't judge me) at home- totally relaxed, giving me the best connection ever, responsive to my seat, staying on the outside rein, and all of that good stuff.

I decided to try a few different methods in getting him to calm down and not be such a bolty piece of shit. There were two main techniques I had- keep trotting and lots of transitions. (I also tried doing groundwork which was a BAD idea oh my god I won't go into it)

Keep trotting meant that I basically just trotted him until he calmed down, lots of circles, lots of changing direction, essentially keeping his brain working and thinking about what was coming next. The idea was that transitions would just amp him up (he does tend to get too excited if he walks too long) and that I don't want to punish him for being forward because that seems to be what is going around after a few Charlotte Dujardin clinics.

TC's baby sister! About a month old now 

Lots of transitions is my go to chill-out technique. When a horse wants to charge around, I do this exercise. First, they have to walk quietly on light contact and when they don't, they have to stand still. Then I let them trot, they must trot at a reasonable pace without me having to muscle the horse around, if they charge, they walk and we go back to the walk requirements- quietly on a light rein or halt. Eventually the horse realizes that just trotting quietly is better than charging and being pulled to a walk/halt. The idea is that trotting around may amp him up and encourage him to only respond to loud aids.

I started with just trotting. He was kind of just a maniac. He stuck his head on his chest and doing harder work (smaller circles, lots of changes of direction) just made him worse.

The transitions DID work, but they did slow him down and I felt bad for having to (sometimes) yank him back to me while going forward. So yes they worked in the short term but I worry for his long term education. He was SO lazy when I started with him. In addition, I did this part second, so it could have just been order effects (thanks, education), where it didn't matter what technique I was using, he was bound to settle after 20 minutes.

And the warmblood baby!

But it was good that he quieted down, he started to relax and I was able to actually get some work done. We did a really nice few figure-8s, maybe not as good as he was at home, but certainly better than he's been off the property. And he was all by himself with only a couple of strange horses near the arena. Yay!

On our way back, we took the long way, which is a nice loop back to his barn along the road. About half way out, I heard a loud BANG (ended up being a transformer exploding!) and he bolted. Like clear down the trail, his entire body tense, head in the air, galloping quite fast! Luckily there was a large fence next to us, so I just turned him into it and he stopped. He stood there, not sure what to make of it, and stared at the pasture next to us where all the horses had taken off.

I told him how amazing and brave he was and got myself to relax a bit. It kind of surprised me too! We walked, quite forward, all the way home with no other incidents and he eventually did relax before we got back. Poor baby!

The barn kitty at one of my teaching barns, he's so fat and spoiled

Back at the barn, I started thinking about his behavior off the property (not even off the property, literally in any arena but home). I've been not wanting to take a clinic on him because of how bad he is in new places, but I started to think that maybe taking a clinic on him while he's being bad will help me understand how best to handle it. I think the transitions are a good thing, as is remaining more present on him, since I tend to want to ride him as light as I can so he takes that to mean that he's all alone. But I do want either validation or a better exercise.

So suddenly, at the very last minute, we're taking our first clinic with Tracey tomorrow morning. And I'm missing some of my own graduation party to do it (sorry mom). Fingers crossed he doesn't make a COMPLETE fool of himself or of me! Last time Tracey saw me, I was an FEI rider on a fancy FEI horse. Now let's see what the four year old has to offer her. Should be fun!