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. 

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.