Achieving Our Goals

TC and I continue to have just the best rides. It warmed up a bit this last week and even though TC got a little quiet in the heat, he still came out ready to work. Even if he insists on me dragging him into the arena each time. 

I set up my Pivo a couple of times because I'm really struggling to figure out what he looks like vs what he feels like. That's always been the case with him - he'll feel really connected and he's actually super short in the neck, or he'll feel off the bit but he's actually pleasantly in front of the vertical. 

The happy ears are the best part!

Still has a ridiculous tail

The first video I took led me to shorten the reins quite a bit in the second video and actually put the horse together. I think I mentioned it a little bit ago, I kind of forget how to ride right now. Between being super out of shape, kind of primed to think that anything he does is fine as long as it's not balking, and not having many lessons in the past six years, I'm a bit of a mess. 

But there was something about the second ride where I just... remembered what the actual hell I was supposed to do. 

I think it was the canter. I've always been a much better canter rider than trot rider and because his balking happened so much going into canter, I didn't get a lot of time riding the canter poorly, because we just weren't doing it. 

Because of that, when I put him into canter and he slowed a little, I bumped him with his leg and he went. And after that, I was like cool, I can put my mechanic into him then, and that's what we did. 

He seemed to be really happy about it! I think he's figuring out that he can actually canter again, and I'm sure that me putting my mechanic into him helped him find his balance and straightness a bit more. 

Excuse me? I had no idea what to do with this

This was more the balance we were in, which is
also great and more appropriate for his fitness level

The lateral work is a bit tough for us right now, I know we need to deal with that, but I've decided that it'll be Kate's problem. So rather than work too much at it, I decided to do something I was good at, which was to put him on quarterline in a bit of a shoulder-fore and do some walk to canter transitions.

He's quite crooked in canter like a lot of them are and this is one of the exercises that I think helped the most. He's pretty motivated to do a walk to canter for some reason (I think he thinks they are fun and very special) and will find his way into canter even if I'm blocking a lot of the directions he'd rather go. So all that is left over is to canter in a straight line. 

And damn, it worked so well! He really sat down and was able to strike off into a much better quality canter. 

I'm so impressed with him

Don't worry, I got a new phone so the screenshot
quality is about to get much better

The day after we did these canter transitions, I decided to do the same thing in the walk to trot transition, which was much harder for him. But he still tried SO hard at them and we got some really good moments of him picking up trot from a bit of a shoulder-fore!

I negotiated with him and let him school over some poles in between, so that kept him happy I think. He did keep trying to guess at what we were doing, so I had to keep telling him he was wrong, which he doesn't love. But he could take even thirty seconds to consider what I am asking him to do... 

I can actually half halt him now

He feels so good!

Again I'm so tickled that we have something real to work on!! 

I remember having a conversation with Kate about my goals with TC. Like I can't expect him to come back to work as if nothing happened, zip back up the levels, take him out at Fourth level and then move him to the PSG. He is fifteen years old this year and I'm also not really in a place where I can or even want to focus on climbing the levels again. 

I do love riding his canter

I came up with these goals:

1. I want to be able to ride him and actually work on things, not just fight with him about being forward

2. I want to keep him fit enough to feed more and go on trail rides/do fun things (like obstacle clinics)

3. I want him to look nice while I ride him so I can take video and not be like ew why does he look like that

And I think I have achieved all of those things! We'll see how things go through this summer because that's always a tough time for us. But I never would have thought that we'd get this far even during the time of year where things are easy for us. Onward and upward!

A Great Ride

I had probably the best ride of our rehab so far yesterday so I wanted to document it! 

For context, the last three rides looked like this:

Thursday 12/18 - I posted about that in my last post

Friday 12/19 - We went on a trail ride for about an hour. He was really good and didn't have any spooking/balking. I did some lateral work on the hills, specifically working on strengthening his left hind leg. 

Saturday 12/20 - We had an okay ride, I was glad to get some video and I really noticed that he seemed plenty forward when watching him, but I know he felt behind my leg. He had a couple of small hesitations (I wouldn't even call them balks) but outside of that he was compliant. At the end of our ride, I finally got annoyed and really hustled him along, and then we ended on a good note. But in the video he was 

THEN I took him on the tracks and he seemed perky, so I let him pick up the trot on the back lane (a long, wide, slightly uphill section that spans almost the entire length of the property behind the pastures) and then had the idea that maybe I could let him canter out there. He picked up canter really easily and loped up the hill until he got a little tired. 

Our last day on the trails for a while, bummer!

I figured that we should do the other lead, so I walked him back down to the bottom of the back lane and then asked him to canter again. This time he really went for it, so I got up in half seat and let him go. He was gaining speed though, and I'm like... pretty aware that my vet called him borderline neuro last time we went to see him, so I asked TC to maybe keep it contained. TC took that as an invitation to leap into the air, so then I kicked him forward and decided that I'd just lean back a bit just in case! 

Finally we were getting to the normal spot where he poops out, so I sat back and was anticipating him stopping. He did not stop, he again took that as a cue to leap even HIGHER into the air and I almost came off. I was hanging off the right side of him and somehow managed to yell "well, don't lose me!?!" and he scooped me back up. I then made him continue cantering all the way up the steeper part of the hill when he finally stopped.

It did kind of scare me though, so I forced the poor horse back down the back lane to do it AGAIN, and this time we did a very controlled, easy canter for maybe eighteen strides before I let him walk and cool out. Looking back, it was super fun! Fun to feel him so enthusiastic about moving forward. 

Sunday 12/21 - I gave him and myself the day off, he was locked in for the day because of the rain, but was then let back out on Monday morning. 

He's such a good trail horse

So then yesterday I drove down to the ranch over my lunch break, and I was glad to see that my arena was useable! I dragged it and then went to get TC out.

I started to target train his right hind leg - I want to ask him to step toward the target, specifically taking a step away from his body with his right hind and aiming to touch his gaskin with the target. He didn't really understand it at first, but we did get some good movement. I think it'll take a few days. This is mostly because his right hind is stuffed up under his body ALL the time, even in the cross ties. And as he's (slowly) putting on muscle, I'm noticing that his right hind is lacking muscle just above the stifle in comparison to the left hind. Anyway, hopefully this can help him!

Love this spot looking down on the ranch!

We then started our ride by walking down the road, which I've been avoiding doing too much for his feet. He does love it though, and he got to see all his horse and cow friends. I tried to show him the new pig that the neighbor got but it was too far away and he was focusing on something else. 

Once in the arena, I had decided to be more structured with my ride. Using my interval timer, you'd think I'd be coordinated in general, but I haven't been. So for each of our eight 2 minute 15 second intervals (4 sets of 1 interval + 1 minute rest + 1 interval each and then he gets a longer break) I had a plan going into them. 

Set 1: Warm Up

I warmed TC up with large figures, working on establishing a connection and bend in each direction. We also worked a little bit on just being responsive to the aids. I didn't care if he maintained it or if he was just being a little more forward, just that he responded at all. He got lots of praise! I also asked him to very briefly canter in each direction for 3/4 of a large circle. Not caring if he was on the bit or anything, just wondering if that might loosen him up.

Set 2: Lateral Work + Lengthenings

On Saturday I had played with an exercise where we'd do some lateral work down the long sides of the arena and then we'd straighten, counter flex, and lengthen on the short sides. I figure that this will help him with his straightness, as well as give him confidence that when I ask him to go forward I'm not going to just chase him endlessly. And it works well with my plan to not ask him to do as hard of work when he's moving forward and to ask him to work a little harder if he's moving slower. 

Set 3: Shallow Loop + 15m Circles

For this exercise, I really wanted to test the connection and the coordination of his hind legs after priming him to be more aware of them from the second set. We did shallow loops down the longside and then every other loop, we'd ride a 15 meter circle at the top of the arena. It was a good way for me to really focus on the way that he used his hind legs and not to just shove them around, and it was good to see how he used himself on the 15 meter circle too. We also did a couple of long diagonals in a lengthened trot, since he was starting to kind of feel himself during this exercise and he seemed to think those were fun!

Such a fun day

Set 4: 10-10-10 Canter Trot Transitions

I decided to take a bit of a risk and do more cantering this ride. In the past, the canter was a source of a lot of balking. About half the time I asked last year, he'd either buck in place, run sideways, kick at my leg, or just stop and stick his head straight up in the air. So throughout this rehab, I've avoided cantering him too much. 

However, one of his favorite exercises (and mine too) was this 10-10-10 exercise I love for unresponsive horses. You trot for 10 strides, then canter for 10 strides, then trot for 10 strides, and so on. The goal is to get EXACTLY ten strides, no more no less. With Rico, and TC in the past, I'd then start to lower the numbers, so trot for 9 strides, canter for 9 strides, and so on. Rico was able to do this at like 2-3 strides, which is CRAZY to think about now! TC would consistently be able to do maybe 6? I forget to be honest. 

He super lit up in this exercise, and so did I. I actually had to half halt him at the trot, and sometimes he'd even slip into canter early. To the right, we were dead on accurate, but to the left he was a little reluctant to do all 10 canter strides. I made it a rule not to get after him about that, just to bring him to trot and start the counting again. 

I didn't have him do this the entire 2 minutes 15 seconds in each direction, I ended up doing maybe 3-4 of them and then keeping him in trot, mostly just working on large figures and enjoying how forward he was (and praising him for it!). 

The ranch is so casually beautiful

It was the best ride we've had in SO long! I felt like we could really work on things the two of us together rather than it being me against him trying to convince him to be forward and him trying to convince me to not make him be forward. 

The best part was how much he seemed to enjoy it too. Not just the last set, but the entire time he seemed really mentally engaged with the work. I can't remember when he was last like that with dressage work. During our foray into jumping last winter, I felt like I had that back, but then things got bad again. Hopefully this can be maintained through the winter and into next year! 

TC got to meet the neighbor's new pig after our
ride and he was SO excited (he actually scared
the pig at first by charging up to it)

I'll ride him again today and hopefully we can replicate some of this good work. And then Christmas Eve I'm planning on doing some groundwork in the barn (maybe targeting his butt cheeks again) since it will be raining all day. And Christmas Day I'm at my aunts' house all day which is convenient because it's going to rain all day again. I think it's alright if he gets a couple of days off after all of that work! 

My plan is to still get his neck injected and maybe talk to the vet about how he uses his right hind. I'm kind of thinking that an SI injection might not be a bad idea? I want to figure out how many joints is possible with what is leftover after the initial injections last month and prioritize them. We can always pull more blood but again I'm trying to take this slow! 

Rewriting the Circle of Aids

Without a trainer, I've been just kind of going through my own basics and filling in some holes that were left after the last year of riding TC in a way I wasn't a fan of. Try to get back to my own roots and theories in training rather than immediately jumping on board with another trainer. The right situation will present itself, I'm sure. 

Coming along well

I've been focusing as much as possible on the circle of aids and how each interact with him and with one another, trying to kind of rewrite the basics on this horse back to what they were like when we started working together. At the beginning, I had this really idealized way I was riding him from my leg to my hand and having him very sensitive to my seat. Somewhere along the line, I was told to add a lot of negative tension to him to get the power necessary for big scores and we lost a lot of the subtlety in our aid system. I really haven't loved the way he was going since 2019. 

I told myself it was just because he was an off breed or whatever, he isn't going to ever look like a horse worth 10x as much. But at the end of the day, if I don't like the way he is going, I don't like the way he is going. And if that's the way he needs to go to be able to do the higher levels, I don't want to do the higher levels on him then. I think I can change things for us though. I think it's possible to train him to the upper levels in a way that doesn't make me cringe when I see video or pictures. 

I'm so happy having his neck back! It's been a while

So, the circle of aids. I teach it pretty aggressively to my students. The leg signals to the hind legs to generate power which travels through the horse's back and is regulated by the seat and received by the hand. The aids have to be in balance with one another and therefore the horse must be responsive to each in the correct way. Not enough leg and there's not enough energy flowing through the system. Not enough seat and the energy doesn't recycle and instead dumps too much into the bridle, causing a horse like TC to retract the neck (or others to lean into the contact). Backwards thinking hands crumple the neck but not enough contact and the energy doesn't recycle effectively so the horse gets strung out. 

TC is responsive to the leg (connecting leg aid = upper calf, energizing leg aid = spur/heel/bump with my ankle) and he follows the hand well when the circle of aids are working. But the seat needed some help, so we did a lot of transitions from the walk to the halt and from the halt to the walk, then also some work from walk to trot from the seat alone to help him understand that the rhythm needed to be determined by my seat, not by speed or energy. A lot of the time he seems to lose balance from walk to trot, picking up the trot as a way to rebalance himself, so we're doing a lot of those transitions to reshape them. 

What a good boy

But then the actual connecting of the hind legs to the hand, that doesn't just happen by hammering the leg on because sending too much power through a back that is not supple is just going to cause tension and that's no good. The back has to be like a hose, not kinked either due to tension or due to crookedness. 

This is where I go to the Xs I wrote about a while back. Connecting the left leg to the right rein and the right leg to the left rein using some suppling exercises like spiraling in and out, shallow leg yields, and shoulder-fore to unkink the hose and allow energy through. The diagonal movement across his body of the energy prevents him from tightening his back and therefore I'm pretty much guaranteed that he steps through to the outside rein... as long as the outside thigh works properly to bring his shoulder around. 

It sometimes does and sometimes does not, so when it doesn't, that's when we shift gears to the shoulder-fore or shoulder-in. Spiraling out and then transitioning to shoulder-fore down the long side, then spiraling in and out on the opposite side of the arena and rinse, repeat. 

Actually lifting the base of his neck and
keeping his chest plate up, phew

At the trot, once I find the lateral suppleness, the circle of aids is not too hard to find. I've been on my own case to keep my leg aids different from one another. Upper calf stays on almost all the time to direct the energy, but bumping with my ankle or touching with my whip can generate more energy. Honestly, he doesn't need a lot of energy generation when the pathway for it is so clear and there's no blockage from my seat or hand. 

The seat regulates the energy, it controls how much gets sent to my hand to create enough reach in the bridle to prevent tightness in the back while recycling the rest of it to the hind legs to create engagement and eventually collection. Send too much energy to the hand and he's going to lose balance. Send too little and he's going to retract and then tighten his back and dump his shoulders down. Try to recycle too much to the hind legs and he'll stall out because he's not strong enough. Not enough and oh, a First level horse. The seat aids have  to... work... though. And that's what we worked on earlier last week because again, we lost a lot of subtlety with the aid system, namely the seat. So we did a lot of transitions and now I can regulate the energy much easier. 

Then the hand. I ask myself a lot of questions to make sure we are on the right path. Who is making the weight in the reins, me or him? If I push my hand slightly forward, does he reach without losing his vertical chest plate? If someone came along and cut my reins, would I have a momentary loss of balance? The hand is the toughest thing for me, TC is so light and feels better in the contact when he's leaning on me than when he's not. So I have to check on it a lot. 

Love this posture

Canter is a bit different. There's just something about his canter that makes me want to take my leg off and pull on his face. That's unhelpful. I realized that somewhat early last week and took a walk break and tried to dissect it. I finally came to the conclusion that I had no idea why I wanted to do that (the only answer I had was "he might... do something bad? But probably not?"), so I was just going to force myself to ride the canter properly, get my leg on, seat bones plugged in and emphasizing the backswing, and push my hand forward. And wouldn't you know it, he went better. Sometimes trusting the feel works and sometimes you just have to ignore it and ride better even if your instinct is that something bad will happen if you do? Dressage is hard.  

The canter is TOUGH to ride like that though, but it feels and looks fabulous. I think it's hard for him too because he drops out from under me sometimes, so we've had to feed more energy through the circle of aids. He also is more likely to retract the neck in canter, so I've had to really focus on my bear down to press his neck forward into my hand. 

The Xs are hard to find in the canter because of the nature of the gait, so the suppleness lacks at canter and he is able to get his neck back at me quite easily, even when I feel like the circle of aids is mostly okay. So we've been doing a lot of haunches-in and some shoulder-fore in canter to try to find a better connection and more lateral suppleness. 

Split behind definitely getting better

So then with this circle of aids now being better, it's about building strength to hold it through movements. Realizing that a lot of our movements are ridden front to back is frustrating, given how much I've spent on lessons in the past. But whatever. 

TC tends to lose balance in his lateral work and press his chest plate down and then I have to take back on the reins to hold him back (and that's only obvious when I force my hand forward and find that he won't seek contact and instead speeds up), so we've been doing a lot of walk-trot and trot-walk transitions in shoulder-in. Once the shoulder-in is good, I'll do the same in haunches-in and then we'll start fixing the half passes. No wondering why he can't bend in those anymore. 

The canter work is surprisingly decent in the new posture, I think because I'm inherently a better canter rider and I find that it's more obvious to me when he drops his shoulders in the canter because it becomes really hard to ride. We are mostly doing some haunches-in at the canter, as I said above, to both find the Xs and to help to increase the collection. 

Welcome back, neck muscles, it's been a while

So that's our focus for right now. Try to fix our aid system. Try to fix the connection. Start rebuilding strength in the collection. I also need to get myself together with my biomechanics as well because that is going downhill quickly without mirrors or help. 

We'll figure out a training situation soon enough. But I'm really happy with the work we are doing now. He's a totally different horse since we moved and took a break from instruction. So we'll run with this until I figure out what to do next. 

Today he sees the chirovet because he had some weird clicking in his jaw while eating last week that I wanted her to look at. I also want to talk to her about what my vet found in Feb. Hopefully we can help him balance out his hind end a bit more. And I'll be curious to hear what she thinks of him now that he's put on a bit more muscle and is actually going properly! 

Aligning Xs

I've been thinking about this concept a bit while riding and a bit while teaching so I figured I'd share to have it written down. I'm still trying to catch up on blog posts I meant to write in October and November. 

The inside leg to outside rein is a staple in most trainers' programs. I use it quite a bit with my lower level riders as I find it helpful for teaching riders to feel the energy transfer from leg to hand. For some reason, going from left to right or right to left seems to be more obvious than from back to front. I think it's because a lot of people (myself included) like to pull on the reins. Why isn't that all we have to do in dressage? It'd be so much easier and I'd be so good at it. 

Most horses have one direction where the transfer of energy from inside hind to outside rein is easier to get. I have one I ride regularly who is pretty aggressively left leg to right hand. Another client horse does the opposite, right leg to left hand is easy to get and going the other way it's a bit harder. We spend a lot of time in shoulder-in right trying to strengthen that direction.

Then there's TC, who is fairly equal in his Xs in that they both feel a bit weak. He feels very parallel to ride. His left hind and left rein connection are weak, his right hind and right rein connection are strong. 

He's very dirty but he didn't have these
chunky muscles at the base of his neck
this summer. 

I spent a day playing with the inside leg to outside rein, as I'm hoping to start teaching some lessons on him this next year and I want to have a nice bridge between what the riders I have in mind know currently and what he can offer them. For example, he's amazing at teaching forward thinking hands as it's really hard to get him connected without them. But he's bad at the inside leg to outside rein feeling. 

Sending him from left hind to right rein sometimes puts his right shoulder out. Sending him from right hind to left rein sometimes makes him drop his right ear. 

After we played with it in each direction, I realized that my issue with it on both sides was that when I circulated energy from one hind leg to the opposite rein, it felt like the two got further apart. Like it almost took his inside hind leg away from the midline? That was weird and so we schooled a bunch of shoulder-in to address it. 

I swapped back and forth between shoulder-in and counter shoulder-in during this exercise and realized that TC's trot was getting better and better, and especially in the changeover. 

Making progress

I started asking him to be straight for longer and I kept imagining both of those channels of energy traveling across his body. Sometimes the left to right would be more obvious, sometimes the right to left, so we kept playing with it until I got two equal feelings from the leg to the opposite rein. 

Just like in the beginning, he sometimes seemed to have the opposite shoulder too far away from each hind leg. Like, simultaneously. What helped a lot was imagining the X through his body get narrower. 

We do a huge amount of shoulder-fore, I mean the horse essentially lives in shoulder-fore, and the reason for that is to keep his hind legs close together to keep him in an unstable balance, where his balance is easily changed by my aids. But shoulder-fore has a single direction, so riding his Xs narrower gave me the same feeling I get in the shoulder-fore while being able to ride in a perfectly straight line. The hind legs became narrower and I felt like I could keep them engaged much more easily. 

It also had the effect of popping him up through his ribcage and withers. In order to get his shoulders to narrow, he had to engage the thoracic sling, which is not an easy feat for him. 

Starting to show a more normal neck,
we still have some filling in to do

Just one of the many things we're doing right now to change the way he's going for the better. And he has been feeling really good! His musculature is completely different from the summer, I should post some pictures of that actually. He is way more forward and lighter on my aids, almost too light in the bridle at this point. And I think both of us are way happier. 

The goal this winter remains to get him back into shape slowly so that his breathing stays good and to keep working on this type of work until the movements come back on easily. Yesterday we rode a bunch of lateral work and it feels so much more accessible. His canter is still very weak, especially the left lead, but it gets better and better every day. 

And most of all, I am much happier. He's more fun to ride, I don't cringe looking in the mirror, and the way I teach and the way I ride are aligned. A good way to end this ridiculous year! 

Endless Repetition

Since the beach ride, TC has only really been ridden twice. On Monday, he got a leg stretching kind of ride and then Tuesday he got shoes (and I was going to ride before the shoes, but then realized I didn't have money for my farrier, so I had to run around gathering money for her). Tuesday after he got shoes, I threw him in a giant turnout paddock to wander around in while I finished up at the barn. He did nothing.

Then I collected him from turnout and on our way back, he he pranced near the round pen. I threw him in there and that's when he ran around and bucked a few times. Weirdo. I think he liked the soft sand. And I wouldn't let him roll in it because he wanted to roll near the fence and I'd just had a semi-traumatic experience helping a horse who had cast recently.

It's been so humid in the mornings recently, boo

Finally yesterday I got a decent ride in. I worked from home because the saddle fitter was coming for one of my client horses and I was asked to be there to ride the horse for it. So I had plenty of TC time after that. And this morning I didn't have client horses, so I got to ride him for a big longer than I normally do as well.

TC is feeling really good lately, I've been mostly working on my own biomechanics and getting him to be a bit more through from the get go.

Both yesterday's ride and today's were really big steps forward in both of those departments. My sitting trot, despite me not being as vigorous about my gym schedule (more on that in my once a month gym post that everyone probably thinks is boring but I like it) lately, feels great, I'm not getting too wiggly in the middle and I'm staying with him more comfortably. My hands remain difficult to control, I just want them very low. Sometimes I get them in a really good place and other times I KNOW that I'm riding with them too low and I start justifying it to myself before forcing them back up.

Check out @spot_on_braiding_wax on insta/fb to get hyped for
Peony's new product! Made it so easy to braid this guy while
he was getting shoes. Full review later!

Because it's easy for TC to get himself on the vertical with his big friesian neck, I've noticed that he can drop his back and bring it back up and drop it again and bring it back up without me panicking about it. Sure, it feels less good when his back is down and I certainly notice and fix it, but it's not this giant evasion like Rico had when he wasn't through his back.

So now I'm on his case about keeping it up 100% of the time, all the time. And that's tough for him, so we've been taking it easy and doing a lot of repetition with it until it's just automatic for him. The trot work is mostly shoulder-fore and walk-trot transitions, the canter work has just been work on large figures and straight lines into the mirror.

It got to the point this morning where I felt like I could bounce him into trot with just my seat from the walk. And that I could settle him into walk from just my seat as well. Both were super fun, he's able to be so sensitive without being a dingbat at this point, which has been amazing to sit on. He gives a really good feeling over his back and into the bridle, like everything is super accessible. I hope we can keep that feeling moving up the levels!

The horse in the mirror had to work just as hard as you did, TC

I have another lesson this Saturday with my trainer, which is good! I'm riding a very hot client horse right now and I start struggling with him the further away I get from riding with Tracey, so I told myself that this client horse is paying for my Tracey lessons because without them, I can't ride him! So off to Tracey we go, and I'm so excited to see how she thinks things are going. Poorly, I'm sure, but I'm finally feeling like we're closing in on the same things at home that we can get at lessons.

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.