Do Less

I really need to do a lot of updates but I keep writing them and then not posting them. So today I'm going to talk about my lesson with Kate and then we'll eventually get to the other stuff. Rico is great just to get that out of the way. I think every blog post should have that written first. 

TC has been really good recently. Not great, but good. He had some down time this summer because my little cat went through a health crisis - she was finally diagnosed with small cell lymphoma (a slow moving cancer in her GI and liver) and is doing much better on her medication, but TC has been on the back burner and will unfortunately stay there until she's stabilized. 

TC with his new fly mask

Much of my life looks like this right
now as we try to get her stabilized on
medication + put weight back on

Just as I'm starting to be able to breathe again after Jade's diagnosis, TC decides he wants to see the vet for his eyeballs, so I had to call the emergency vet out one day because his eyes were swollen, red, and had a ton of discharge. He got eye ointment 3x a day for a week and then has been fine. I tell you, I'm not doing much clicker training under saddle anymore, but for things like this, so grateful to have that tool. He went from being very tall to letting you put the ointment in his eyes while loose in his stall. 

THEN we start to come back to work and I have a vacation planned. So I finally just broke down and had my trusty rider ride him. She is a fabulous up and coming young rider who is riding at the PSG level on her own horse, she rides TC so beautifully and she refuses to get wrapped up in his dumb games. So she rode him three times last week, then I decided to keep the momentum going with a lesson today.

Said vacation included riding on this sea plane!

I called him "eyeballs" for a while

As I said, TC has been good, not great. Like we're doing all the stuff, he's doing shoulder-in, haunches-in, half pass. We're doing walk to canter and canter to walk transitions, some counter canter work. I've been working on a little half step to keep him better engaged. You know, we're DOING stuff. This has been really amazing, don't get me wrong, he feels better than he has in years. 

But he doesn't feel like... FABULOUS. Which at least when I was riding with my previous trainer (a couple trainers ago), I was told to come to terms with. TC is not a high quality horse the way that Rico is or some of my former clients' horses. He's a big, loose mover, but the quality just isn't there the way that it is in a purpose bred horse. "Get over it" was what I was told. 

Except that if he's a little luggy or a little blah in the connection, it's not that fun to ride. And I feel like such a jerk saying that because a year or two ago I would have killed to be working on his lateral work again, or the canter work like this. But I've found myself this summer looking more forward to trail rides than to arena rides. So I figured I'd take some lessons and call on my rider more often to help push TC and I past this luggy part. 

Rico looking AMAZING with all his
dapples, btw TC is only an inch taller
than him, wth

Eyeballs eyeing the cows

So today was TC and my first lesson since Kate was out in person in May (just before all my cat drama started). Kate had ridden him and it was like magic, TC was so so sharp to my aids and so together and the best part about it was that HE was super excited about work. 

I want to be able to get him there myself, but I 1) am fully immersed in stereotypical amateurdom right now (mostly just not being fit to ride) and 2) have such an emotional history with this horse that it makes riding him really tricky for me sometimes. Especially when I have to sharpen him up. It's like I'm flooded with the idea of here we go again vs understanding that he can be trained, we fixed the underlying issues that were causing his balking (and if we didn't, I have to work him to find out that his balking is back, and then we'll go to back the vet). 

We started on a square in walk, with Kate wanting me to ride shoulder-in from corner to corner, asking him to halt in shoulder-in. For a horse who was wanting to stop the whole time, having to halt in shoulder-in was surprisingly difficult. It required him to organize himself better and he's not a particularly tidy animal when it comes to his legs and body. 

We talked a lot about the sharpness to the aids since I feel like this is going to be our biggest issue for a while. TC is responsive to the aids, but not sharp to them. And I fall into the trap of it being good enough, especially good enough with a little nagging here and there to keep him from stopping. Kate encouraged me to evaluate how he felt from 1-10, with 10 being extremely sharp, and to also stop nagging/just let him stop. It's a lesson I've had before and will continue to require for the rest of my life. I asked Kate to please record a ringtone or something, toss up some audio on spotify maybe? something that just progressively asks me whether I am doing more work than my horse, so that I could listen to it while riding. Or maybe I'll print out and laminate some signs for myself around the arena. 

TC also got some bombproofing

And I climbed all over him

From there, we continued to address the sharpness with transitions, I was to halt in the corner of our square, then ask TC to trot to the next corner into a halt. If TC didn't respond to my leg aid, I was to tap him lightly, then show him the whip and tap him harder. TC figured this out VERY quickly and was much easier to ride the rest of the lesson. I did discover that some of my hesitation to really demand this is that I get a little left behind sometimes because I am woefully unfit for riding right now and I felt guilty not staying with him when I'm asking him to be forward. 

Kate pointed out that it wouldn't happen if he was reliably forward, and I also decided that like... I'm not even 10% of this horse's body weight, I'm not pulling on him or slamming on his back when it happens, I'm just getting slightly out of balance behind him. So he can deal with it? He works 5 days per week for an hour, two of those days being trail rides? Just handle it bro. 

Because he's literally a kids horse now,
that's my 6yo niece on him bareback on
the trails without me leading him (because
he bites me)

They even played in the sprinklers
together and he loved it

I had really wanted to work on the canter with Kate because I had done some changes about a month ago and while (very excitingly, I am very excited about this) they were all clean, they were also quite downhill. Which granted, was how they used to be too. I definitely want to get the changes better quality and start playing with multiples eventually, but clearly we are not quite there yet. Especially on the left lead, TC feels quite downhill and when I ask him with my aids to sit down a bit, he either quits or props with his hind legs. 

Kate had me alternate between shoulder out to haunches-in, to shoulder-in in canter. I'd done a little half pass on him in canter about a month ago but haven't really done much lateral work in canter at all. Right now the canter feels more like survival than work. But this work completely changed things for us. Not only did he feel more uphill, it kind of distracted me from babying him about the canter. Like he can sustain a canter for longer than I thought. And it also let us have a few discussions about what to do when he breaks. I'm supposed to scoot him forward - and I tend to not let him break. I get too involved in hoiking him along and then that's just how we canter. 

We talked a bit about how sometimes with these horses that are good like this, there are not a lot of training opportunities. Like he's doing a good job, he's responsive enough, he's collected enough, he's supple enough. And especially if I'm intervening when there's a chance he won't be quite right, that leaves me zero time to actually train him to be better. He needs to make a mistake, be asked not to make that mistake, then be allowed to make the mistake again and choose not to, then be rewarded for the right choice. Not prevented from making the mistake in the first place and not be rewarded for anything because I'm like eh it was fine. 

Once I had scooted him forward for breaking a couple of times from canter, the canter felt WAY more rideable and way better. Like he was taking me much more seriously and I could just focus on the exercise instead of thinking so much about the horse under me. 

He's learned to stand still a bit better
for his kids when grooming too

Lots of tractor work recently for me

Our last bit of work was some more in the trot. I felt like I had plenty in canter to work on - mostly lateral work and just letting him break, I want to try that for a couple of weeks and see where we are. But the trot historically has been quite difficult for me. We did an exercise that hurt my brain - a figure-8 where one circle was shoulder-in and one was shoulder out. Then we did an even worse exercise that hurt my brain even more, I can't even remember it, it was a ton of lateral work all in walk. 

The idea in the lateral work is again to get him just trucking along on his own. I want to help too much and get my legs all doing stuff. I have a LOT of work to do in this department, I feel so awkward in the lateral work now after not doing it for so long. Sometimes it feels like my upper body is just doing stuff on its own and then I'm like hey wait a minute, why am I collapsing like that. 

The other thing I need to work on is giving him more support with my left rein when tracking right. That is the hand I like to pull on, but I've definitely overcompensated for the pulling by not really having it connect. So when we do our lateral work to the right, he doesn't stand up so well on the left front because there's no support there for him. Instead, he folds his neck in half to the right and juts the base of his neck to the left. Once I had him straighter, he felt way way better. 

Little cat taking advantage of my policy
with old/sick animals: they can do what
they want, Rico is proud I'm sure

All in all it was a fabulous lesson. I feel so lucky to have Kate helping me with my silly gray horse. I'm genuinely looking forward to my next ride on him! Hopefully as things with my little cat stabilize (right now she's getting blood work every 2 weeks as we try to get her liver values back to normal, hopefully we can get to a point where she only needs blood work every 2-3 months!) I can ramp up my lessons and maybe even some training rides from my rider so that we can get TC into more work without me having to ride so much since I do need to do my job. 

This fall may be a little wonky as my priority stays with my little cat, but I'm really hoping to set us up well for next year. Because I think I've decided I'd really like to get this horse back to the show ring. Even if it's just at Training level or something. And honestly just for the pictures and so that I can get my amateur status finalized and put my first ride as an amateur into my record. Also I had bought a new coat I haven't worn in the show ring yet, a travesty. 

Straightness and Connection

Over the weekend, I had really good rides on TC! 

I rode in the arena on Friday and Monday, and then Saturday we did a trail ride at home and on Sunday he had the day off since I had a prior obligation that kept me away from the barn. 

Requires cookies

Does not require hugs, rider wanted a hug though

My ride right after our trail ride last week (I think Tuesday?) wasn't the best. I think he was tired and just a little above where he needed to be, not really lifting through his shoulders. But he also only had the one day off in between. I did more face pulling than I had been doing and I ended up cutting the ride a little short. We did a trail ride at home on Wednesday and that was great, then he had Thursday off. 

Friday I came out and ended up riding in the middle of the day. After sleeping VERY well for two weeks, I told people I was sleeping well AND I got my hopes up that after eight years of insomnia, I'd finally fixed it; so naturally, I haven't been able to sleep a lick since.

It was a bit hot, so TC and I struggled a little through the warm up. I'm still not quite sure how to approach the warm up with him. I tend to get a little frustrated that he starts out slow (not balky, but like, could you have an ounce more power in any of your gaits) and I'm sure he's frustrated that I want to skip the warm up and jump right into doing work when he's now fifteen years old and has some joint stuff. 

Lots of ranch work this weekend, pastures got
mowed!

And trails got widened/worked on!

I've tried employing what I did with Rico years ago, which is to canter first. But this horse is not a canter horse, if we do that, his canter just feels lethargic and gross. So we trot first, doing big circles and some easy transitions. Then we canter and it's absolutely fine. And then finally when we come back to trot, he seems happy to work. 

Again, acknowledging that being happy to work hasn't really been him at any point of his rides the last few years, so it's great that we can get there!

I can't quite remember exactly what we worked on that day, but most of my work these days are on:

1. Remembering that I know how to ride horses

2. Shoulder-in

3. Counter canter loops

4. Walk to canter

And now reading that back, it sounds like we're schooling Second level. We are not! I just find that these exercises are really good for us. 

Oh hello counter canter!?

Shoulder-in, which we also did on Monday, has been super helpful for getting him to find more stability in his body and finding the diagonal connection from the inside hind leg over his body to the outside rein. Tracking left, he feels pretty good, but tracking right, he really struggles. He wants to come a little above the outside rein and twist his neck. 

Counter canter loops, and on Monday, 20m half circles in counter canter, have been great for the straightness and the connection. He again gets kinda twisty in his body and my enthusiasm for pulling on the left rein means that we go careening sideways in canter sometimes. 

And finally, the walk to canter transition is something he's long been good at and enjoys, but he likes to jump to the outside of the line during the transition, AND it's obvious to me when he does it AND I'm a better canter rider than trot. So I figure that I can help him find straightness in the transition and that this will help us find straightness in the canter in general. 

So a friend told me that putting a fake
dragonfly on your horse keeps flies
away and I think it's so funny (and I 
kind of think it works?)

And he's just happy?

The remembering how to ride horses thing keeps happening. I haven't had that many lessons since 2020, and even then I was mostly riding alone. Which is FINE I was a professional. Now I am not, I'm deep in amateurdom after years of not really riding. I'm also not nearly as fit as I was before and am super out of practice. 

On Friday, I remember going along thinking, wow, he's kinda down in his shoulder, bummer. And then a circle or two later I was like OH, what if I... asked him not to be. And I put my leg on and kinda bumped him up under himself and he said yes! And then it all went so so much better. 

Then on Monday, and if my Pivo hadn't been such an asshole, I'd have a hilarious video, because I was trotting and kind of lamenting about how unstable I felt in the trot, like he kept falling out in this one place and I was just letting him do it and reacting to it rather than preventing it. And I think I said out loud right near the camera "oh my god I could use my abs for this" and again the ride went much better. 

Remember how you have abs?

So much reach with his hind end now

Luckily I find this just hilarious. I'm truly enjoying experiencing both sides of the coin. I put so much pressure on myself to ride well and learn as much as I could and be USDF Gold Medalist Megan. And now I get to be an amateur, and I'm learning SO much about myself and about horses and about dressage from this other side. Maybe I should write down what the differences feel like. 

Anyway, what it means is that I can remain in really good spirits about the whole thing. When I forget how to ride horses it just cracks me up, like people used to pay me to do this and now I'm like oh woops, why is my hand over there? How long has it been like that? Have I always done that?

Truly I'm having the time of my life no matter what is going on with my riding. 

Slowing Down + Adding Lateral Work

TC has been pretty good this week! I'm still kind of experimenting with things to get us on the same page. After watching the last video I took (trying to take them every week), I noticed that when I thought he was forward enough, he was borderline running past his balance. 

He's always looked different than he feels to ride, which has been a struggle for me in the past (and now!). He looks more forward, more active, more responsive than he feels, and I've had instructors tell me to slow down when he feels like he's barely moving. 

I know a lot of this comes down to responsiveness, and in the past I've basically just added tension to get that responsiveness, and I'd rather not do that this time around.

TC likes to stop to say hi to Rico

Another big part of why I want to run him off his feet is the balking. The big thing I'm looking to feel is a commitment to moving forward without having the feeling that in the back of his mind he's waiting to stop. One way I was able to combat this when riding him before was to run him off balance so that it was harder for him to stop, then he felt like he was forward! Because he couldn't not be forward. But that was not conducive to collection and that's where things started to get really hard for us. 

And I think this is really making the balking worse because he is probably uncomfortable being that off balance, so he wants to slow down to catch his balance, and then I say no I need you to be forward. It's also not fully accepting the aids if the horse literally has no choice but to do the thing. Like if you slap a horse in draw reins, is he actually accepting the aids? Or is there no other choice? I need to give him the chance to balk in order to fix the balking. 

His neck looks great!

So in my recent rides, I've been challenging myself to ride slower. At the walk, I've been playing with some lateral work, asking him to take slow, deliberate steps. My goal is to make the steps more active, but for now I'm not working on that so much. We do straighten and march forward, but in the actual lateral work, I'm not hurrying him. 

Then in the trot, we trot slowly, but we trot slowly and we do harder work, like some lateral work or smaller circles. Then we straighten and we go more forward and he gets a LOT of praise. And then we slow down again (my choice) and he has to work harder, not super hard, just a little harder. 

In my last ride (yesterday), it did seem to help a bit? He definitely got to a more rideable place a little faster than usual, although I did ride earlier in the day. We were able to do a few fun exercises. The first was to do haunches-in at the trot to the right, I'm really working to get him comfortable bringing his right hind away from his body and to engage his left hind and he gave me some really good steps! Nothing too fancy or carrying, just mechanically good steps. And then to the left, we worked on some shoulder-in to renvers (again just like, the smallest amount of angle) and that was great. 

Rico did come over, TC was more
excited than he was though lol

As things got better in the ride, we did a little lateral work down the long side in a slower trot, then on the short sides, I'd counter bend him (not too much, just enough where his body was straighter than the line he was on) and ask him to lengthen his stride a little bit. 

We DID have two balks though. One was tracking left during a walk to trot transition, this was a really popular balking moment for him in the past, so it was not unexpected. I've been really fair (I think) about asking him to trot. I first ask with my leg + voice, then wait, if he doesn't trot, I ask again with my leg + voice and wait. Then if I have to ask a third time, that's when I escalate with my tiny spurs until he goes. 

When I do escalate, I make sure that he's MOVING but then I half halt back to the trot that I had wanted in the first place (vs continuing to chase him) - essentially he has to work much harder to get to the trot I was asking for than he would have had to if he'd just picked up trot. That time to the left, I got to the second ask and I felt him suck back. So that's the start of the balk, not just him ignoring me or taking his sweet time trotting. But once I escalated, he got moving pretty quickly after it, so not a bad balk like before! 

The lighting was weird, but TC is so
cute with him

The second one was during trot in another classic area. To the right in this one corner of the arena, we turn to go "uphill" and by uphill, I mean that my arena is a 1% grade, it's not actually truly uphill. This is a place where he likes to stall out and start hover trotting, so as we came around the corner, I asked him to please move a bit more forward. Instead, he threw himself through his right shoulder and darted inward, and when I put my leg on, he sucked back and went more sideways. This is pretty classic setup for a balk for him - I ask for forward, he contorts his body and then becomes ANGRY with me for expecting him to go forward from such a crooked place. But if I block him from becoming crooked, he balks really hard (head straight up, refusing to take a step forward) and becomes ANGRY with me for blocking him because obviously he's really just trying to go forward and needs to shift his weight to do so. 

For that one, again I escalated and then he was totally fine. I do think the spurs are a much better choice than the whip. I wish I'd switched a while ago. The whip sometimes would cause him to buck and that's something he can do... while balking. So I think I'm going to keep the spurs and just carry the whip for lighter aids like asking him to remember that he has hind legs. 

This is what I feel like at work AND
with TC right now lol

I was a little disappointed with the balking (although it really wasn't bad), and of course I considered overthinking it. But I did make a conscious decision to ride him slower and put him at risk of balking. I do think that's the right call. My hope is to give him confidence that I'm not going to run him past his balance, and to get me recalibrated to develop the feeling of forward from a more appropriate stride length. And unfortunately there will be times where his muscle memory takes over. 

And maybe there IS pain there, I will be scheduling him for injections again in February and we'll do the last things on our laundry list. But so far I feel comfortable pushing him a little bit up until that appointment (which is only like, three and a half weeks of riding since I'll be gone for a lot of January - and at least one of those weeks it will be pouring rain so it's pretty minimal work) to find out whether we can get through this. 

But by the end of the ride, he felt great. He was happily pretty forward (for him), we ended on a fabulous note of him doing some lateral work with me being able to actually half halt him to rebalance him, and he was super pleased at the end of the ride with his ears forward and happily marching out on the tracks to go home. 

Letting Someone Else Make Decisions

On Tuesday, I had my first ever remote lesson! I've taught a ton of them to all kinds of people but this was the first time I actually got to be on the other side of the camera. 

Kate had taken a couple of lessons from this instructor and was really impressed so I figured I'd give her a try. She's earned an 80% at Second level in the rated ring and I figure anyone who would take the time to train a horse to the point where they'd earn an 80% at Second level is someone I wanted to talk to about the basics. She's also trained a lot of off breed horses and it sounded like she was very open to being creative to help the horses out vs applying the same methodology to all horses. What I've learned having an off breed is that I need to find someone whose butt hasn't only been on warmbloods or purpose bred horses. 

Changing posture is going to be a long slog

She was all of that and more! I was super happy with the lesson and I'm definitely planning on taking more with her.

I didn't tell her very much about us. All I told her that his tendency was to drop his thoracic sling, shorten his neck, and keep his hind legs out behind him and that I wanted some tools to help him build up in this new posture. She watched us go and told me that I'd done a fabulous job with his foundation, especially in the connection. 

Honestly, TC felt really really good that day so I was just as pleasantly surprised. I think he likes the saddle we are trying right now (more on that later) and I think he thought he was putting on a bit of a show for Kate, who was my videographer. His assumption whenever anyone is in the arena (or near him, really) is that they are there to see him, he always puffs up a bit when someone walks by, even if it's just someone walking down the road with their dog. I could go the rest of my life without showing dressage again and be totally fine, but what motivates me to get back in the show ring is how much TC loves it. 

Shoulder-in for days

She had me walk and asked me to get him into the smallest walk steps I could. He immediately offered half steps and I told her that we had started those and she thought that was excellent. She told me that what she'd like to do is utilize the half steps and walk to halt transitions to help him find the posture we're after. I liked that but kept thinking that his neck was getting too short... 

She mentioned that he might get stressed in this work and that she wanted to make sure that I kept it fun and easy for him so that I could catch him tomorrow (lol!) and I told her that I had him clicker trained and that I could just click and treat when I felt him try so that it turned into a game. She thought that was great and I took out the clicker. Immediately TC went from mildly stressed to totally into the game and she would tell me "click for that!" when he went well. I've never had a trainer be so immediately accepting of the clicker training! 

From there she had us walk, trot, and canter in shoulder-in in both directions. She wanted my inside hand away from his neck to avoid it pinning him into my right rein. Bringing that rein open a little bit turned the shoulder-in into a leg yield, but it was less about riding a correct shoulder-in and more about finding a channel where he could lift through his thoracic sling and put his inside hind leg in a bit of a deep cross over to support that. 

Finding some more sit in the canter

In walk and trot, I didn't feel a huge difference at first. It wasn't until we went into canter where I was like OH OKAY. She had me bring him onto a small circle and then spiral out in shoulder-in, asking the haunches to step out first. But before we jumped into that exercise, she assured me that horses do not cross over in canter and we don't want that as much as we want the alignment to shift so he can take some more weight behind. 

I have... never felt my horse canter like he did on Tuesday. He even got super smug about it, he actually stopped to demand a cookie for his trouble, which I thought was hilarious. 

While the canter was feeling great, it was also a bit weak, I could feel him wanting to stop, so we did short bursts of this work and then took breaks. 

Me to TC as he stops to demand cookies

After all of that, she asked if she could see his stretchy trot and I was like YES YOU CAN and he immediately trotted around reaching out to contact. After all the collected work, the stretch felt really good, he kept his chest up a bit better than usual. She then asked if I could get him to stretch in canter and so I picked up the canter and wow that is tough for him, especially to the left. We've done a little bit of it but not a huge amount, definitely something that needs to be worked on. 

I let him walk and she told me what her game plan would be with him. Do shorter, intense rides. Thirty minutes max but with lots of walking before and after of course. For the first fifteen minutes of my ride, I'm to do half steps, walk halt transitions, shoulder-in at all three gaits, and the shoulder-in spiral exercise at canter. Then I am to do fifteen minutes of trotting and cantering in a stretchy frame. Then we end our ride. That should be our next two weeks. 

After that, we start alternating between the two. Ride a highly collected movement, then ride a stretchy movement. Ride half steps, then immediately transition into stretchy trot. Ride shoulder-in in canter, then ride stretchy canter.  

From there, we start developing the show quality movements. Ride a compressed shoulder-in into a stretchy shoulder-in. Ride a half pass in half steps and transition toward a lengthening (not medium or extension, but letting him down into a lengthening) in the half pass. 

My right leg was like "spiral out? ABSOLUTELY"
and slipped back where it'd love to live for good lol

The theory is this: TC needs to change his posture for the collected work but when he does that right now, he shortens his neck too much. So we need to school the posture change to get him past our First level purgatory that I willingly put us in at the beginning of this year to deal with the intense compression we were in. But we also need to address that shorter neck. For now, build each up individually in those two fifteen minute sessions. Get him as comfortable in the collected posture as he is in the stretching and vice versa. 

Then start to alternate more quickly so that he can easily go from one to the other and back again. To the point where when I'm asking him for his collected posture, a bit of stretching lives in it. When I'm asking him for his stretching, a bit of the correct posture lives in it. 

Then start to build the movements back with this work in mind. Make the stretching a reward for the posture. Bring him into half pass from half steps to make sure that the half pass begins with the correct posture, but then push it out to a stretching/lengthening half pass so that the movement rewards itself. TC will think "oh good, half pass, the first couple of steps are hard but the rest of it is easy!" and will be more willing to make those first few steps really good. And that's how we build up. 

He felt more reachy in my lesson than this but it's
at least different from what we've been getting?

After the lesson I was just... at the ranch. That was probably the coolest part of all of this. Being at a private barn means no trainers really want to come out for just one lesson and the ranch isn't really set up to host a clinic. For as long as I'm boarding there, I'll have to haul out for lessons! Or I can take remote lessons. And I think while EHV-1 is local (not as local as in March but still too close for comfort with Rico being at the ranch and me wanting to protect him at all costs), taking remote lessons would be really helpful! And then I don't have to give up my weekends or take a day off work! 

I gave TC a quick bath and then wrote all these things down in my dressage journal. Our ride yesterday wasn't anything to write home about and some of the changes that I felt on Tuesday just weren't there. Why? No idea. I didn't have video from the lesson so I sent Kate the video from Thursday to see what she thinks. Hopefully she can help be my voice of reason! We're going to trail ride today and then try again tomorrow. I might try another lesson next week and see if I can video it on my soloshot to get a good idea of what is happening IN the lessons! 

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! 

Shoulder-in For Days

On Wednesday, we had another lesson! The last couple of lessons have been a bit like whiplash, with one being very focused on the basics and the second going over flying changes and canter half pass. In the last two weeks, TC and I have been focusing on getting the flying changes back to normal (aka something we do on a regular basis) and continuing work with the connection. 

Tracey asked me what I wanted to work on and I said the trot. I find his canter much easier and while I know the canter work needs to be stronger as well, at the end of the day, the trot is where I struggle the most. I told her that I could feel the collection in the canter fairly easily and I knew what I needed to do to get him more collected in canter, but that I felt like I kind of mistook tightness in the back for collection in the trot because he can get real lofty and then I see it on video and I realize he's not at all engaged. 

Reaching for contact, that's a tough one for us

And that's how I got an entire lesson in trot. An entire lesson. In the sitting trot. After the lesson I vowed to up my workout game, I need to be fitter, much fitter. 

We began by working on the connection on a large circle. Tracey wanted my hands to be more still, which I swear they are but every time I come to a lesson she's harping on me about it so I guess I need them to be even more still. She says I keep giving away the inside rein and I know I've been that trainer yelling at a client to stop giving away the contact and they get that "huh??" look on their face, but seriously, I don't feel like I'm giving away the contact. Whatever, she's probably right. 

So much sitting trot

In trot, she still wants his neck lower. I get what she means now though. He retracts at the base of his neck and so while his poll is at a good place, she wants him to let go of the base of his neck a bit more and drape it into my hand vs pushing back and up at me. So we worked to figure out a way for me to push his neck longer without "throwing the contact at him" because that is apparently unacceptable. TC and I are happy to have that dynamic though, we aren't fun haters. 

A lot of it was to get off the outside rein. Apparently I've been riding him way way way too constrained on the outside rein and especially tracking left, I also cross the outside rein over his neck. The moment she pointed that out, I was like OHHHH FUCK OKAY and we had a few circles of me trying to keep my right hand away from his neck but also keep him into my left rein but also keep his right shoulder tracking and also keep his left hind under him and it was just chaos for a bit there. But then he did feel much better. I've learned long ago to just trust Tracey and ride through what feels like the wrong set of aids/alignment until BAM my horse unkinks and steps into both reins evenly. 

We did not canter in our lesson but here's a shot
from the day before!

From there, she had us ride shoulder-in on the circle. I felt slightly proud when she said she only likes to use this exercise for upper level riders and then laughed to myself because I use it for everyone. It's a good exercise though and I felt like it showed some of our holes. TC doesn't love to let me on both sides of him, he's happy if I kind of hang off one side or let one side of him slide out or even just let him get soggy on one side (usually the inside unless we are doing shoulder-in). 

The shoulder-in on the circle was only good if I had both sides of him and it was quite bad if I didn't have him. TC resisted a little bit when I went to put my outside aids on him (but not restricting on the outside rein, it was tricky to get the balance), getting stacked up and pushing back at me. I was to push him into my hand more and then push his neck out and get access to the base of his neck while insisting that the shoulder-in remain a shoulder-in. It was tough! 

I could really feel him sitting better though, and Tracey had me bring him back to straight and add energy/power from my core, which was a new one for me. It immediately made sense though. If you add power with this horse by putting leg on, he often pushes himself off his hindquarters and bumps into the contact, shortening his neck in the process. When I had him on both sides, I could take my core (which was very sad and tired at this point of the lesson) and add more power within the circle of aids instead of just pushing him off the hind legs with my leg. I KNEW this horse was going to be fucking weird in this way. Leg aids with TC are not always helpful, I mostly ride with my leg off of him so it'd make sense that adding power to his gaits is not going to come from my leg. 

So much shoulder-in

To end, we did some shoulder-in down the long sides and up centerline heading right at Tracey. We started with too much angle and me not being able to lengthen his neck and by the end, holy shit. This horse is SO COOL. 

At the end, I stopped and we chatted about how he changed over the course of the lesson. I told her that I felt like normally, I don't find that the lateral work helps him all that much. Like he can do all the lateral work and it looks nice and scores okay, but it doesn't improve the gaits. I told her that with THAT shoulder-in, the one we ended on, I could feel the trot getting better and better and better. The trot became more uphill, he got more on my aids, and best of all, I could feel him SITTING in the trot. That's probably a first, honestly. I was so happy with it.

Best pony, we both got Thursday off

Overall it was a great lesson! Despite not cantering, which I realized after the lesson ended and I looked at my equisense. 

I'm SO glad we are taking this year to work on the basics and stick with Third level. I really want to feel like we own the level and we just didn't get to that point last year. I'm excited to get him feeling really good at this level and to lay the foundation for Fourth level. More on that later though!

Connect & Collect the Horse

I have two lessons this week, which is kind of unheard of for me. Last year I took a record breaking 17 lessons and I regret not taking more of them. That's like, a little more than once a month. This year, my goal is to take 40 lessons, which means I need to hustle given that last week's lessons were the first of the year. And we're now in a monsoon of rain for two weeks so probably won't be trailering anywhere.

My first lesson was Wednesday with Tracey and you’ll find out about my lesson on Thursday with Jec tomorrow! 

The trot is still so hard

I haven’t ridden with Tracey for a while. First, TC had his lungs looked at so we skipped two lessons, then we had one that was all trot in 1.5 minute intervals, then COVID came to my barn so she didn’t come out. Then TC decided he needed more trail rides (we go out tomorrow) and I pulled him from her schedule last time. Last week we were finally good to go! 

We started by showing her how he was in warm up and she seemed happy! That’s good news, the only major comments we got in warm up was that he could slow down his tempo so he didn’t get so much over his front legs, something I was working so hard on before his stifle and then ignored afterwards, and the other comments were about his flexion at the poll in our warm up leg yields, which I also haven’t been working on. Cool! Not a bad starting point. 

I expected Tracey to slaughter me for basically bringing her a “Third” level horse who was off the bit, but she did say that he was looking much better and had put on muscle (she said it in her Tracey way where she also said that I needed to now USE that muscle, but I’ll take the compliment!). But I knew I swung too far and so she emphasized the need for him to stretch to contact. Not just telescope his neck up and out. Yep, agreed, he no longer stretches all that well to contact. 

Stretching to contact here though!

But wow, all that work really has paid off in that when I slotted that last puzzle piece into the connection, he felt AMAZING. Previously his go-to maneuver was to get short in the neck or retracted or whatever, even that hesitation, like "are you sure you want me to flex at the poll a little?" gave me the ability to keep his neck inflated. He felt so good in the contact. 

Then he got too low and I gave away the contact and Tracey was on me about that. I'm hoping that this year we'll be able to do a bit fitting clinic so we can see if there's some way to convince him to stay out to contact juuuust a bit more but for now I just need to keep the contact and keep pushing him out there without letting his neck get short or giving away the reins or letting the stride get longer or the tempo increase while rubbing my belly and patting my head and doing complex math problems at the same time. 

We started working on some lateral work and he needed to be simultaneously straighter and more bent at the same time. Basically he folds at the base of his neck, takes his entire neck out of his inside shoulder, but then when I went to straighten that, he counter flexed and pushed his ribcage into my inside leg and she didn't want him to do that. So he needed to be straighter at the base of his neck, more bent through his ribcage (side note: I know the ribcage does not bend, it shifts outward, but it's easier to explain that way), and flexed to the inside. That was TOUGH for him and for me as well. 

When I did get it though, the lateral work felt way better. We even got to school some half pass (for the first time in months, I haven't really played with many movements) and Tracey noted that he wanted to bulge his inside shoulder to the inside, so we did some half pass to leg yield and worked to get him filling the outside rein a bit better and wrapped around my inside leg. That's just not a natural thing for either of us and I know it's going to take a while to get it right, which is fine! 

OKAY TC

We stopped and I thought we might be good but then the lesson that went after me wasn't going to happen, so we decided to look at the canter to walk transition. My reason for asking about this, even though he isn't going to be doing those in the show ring ever again, was because they are a great lie detector in the collection. 

I've always been a bit of a claustrophobic rider in the collected work, especially in the pirouette canter. Knowing that TC is a year, or hopefully less, away from beginning to school the canter pirouettes, I need to address my issues with the collection before I put them on him. Doing the canter to walk transitions is helping me learn to sit into the collection and relax there a bit. I want to give him confidence to sit down and stay there so I, myself, need to feel confident in the collected canter. 

The transitions went well although my timing wasn't great, my issue is typically that I ask too early because I'm like OMG MAKE IT STOP but knowing that was my issue, I did the opposite and kept him in it for too long. He felt good though and it gave me a REALLY good feeling for where he's at in the collection so I can ask him to get to about 80% of that more regularly. 

Not unhappy with this except that he takes so much
frontline activation that I then lose my backline ugh

Generally it was a pretty fabulous lesson and good way to start back up in doing dressage in a normal way (aka not riding my horse off the bit anymore). Since then, TC has still been struggling to not fold his neck and curl a bit when asked to really connect like we did in this lesson, so I'm taking it slow and making sure that first and foremost we have a correct outline and THEN asking him to connect within that. He had acupuncture yesterday so we'll see how much that helps him again, it made such a difference last time that I'm hoping he'll feel better in the contact soon.