Productivity Inside

I've been struggling a bit during the week (when we're stuck inside) to do productive work. I have to dodge a lot of craziness in there and even when I have the arena to myself, the arena is only a little wider than a dressage court, and about the length of a short dressage court. On a baby horse with a ridiculous stride length, it's really hard to do much more than ride around in large circles waiting for daylight savings time to kick back in and hoping that it doesn't rain (and then feeling like a terrible person for thinking that because we REALLY need rain).

Wide open spaces!

So I started trying to come up with some exercises to do in a small space. Here is a list of the ones I came up with, PLEASE add to this if you have anything.


Transitions
Obviously we can and should do transitions. TC needs to be more responsive to my leg and seat in general. We also need to work on our halt transitions for centerlines. So I'll be employing several of my own walk-trot transition exercises, as well as working on canter-trot-canter, which is a prerequisit to doing simple changes through the trot. I want to get the trot to canter itself better too, he's slowly learning to stay on the bit during them but they could use extra attention.

Glad he finally let me pull that damn mane

Spiraling in and out
This is great for us because TC isn't the world's most supple creature. It also really helps the connection, especially in a small space when he wants to suck back or get too low. Or both.
Make it harder: leg yield out instead of just spiraling
TC can do this, I like to do both to test the difference. Can I distinguish between the two? Or does the spiral out feel leg yield-y and does the leg yield feel like he's just falling out?

Smaller figures
TC needs to learn how to ride on smaller figures. He's been in dressage training for nearly a year now, and he's a lot stronger. I'm no longer as worried about the stress on his joints at the trot, so it's time to start adding in those ten meter circles. The smaller arena is good for him to learn to canter on smaller figures for real. Twenty meter circles are still really hard for him, so I've been doing fifteen meter half circles sometimes. My goal coming out of this winter is to gain full access to the canter- laterally (not lateral work, just controlling the bend) and longitudinally- so that I can really turn next year into canter boot camp. Realistically, the canter will always hold him back from moving up, so I want to catch it up to the trot as best I can.
Make it harder: Haunches and shoulder in on small figures is a great suppling exercise.
TC isn't quite ready for that yet, but I use a lot of this on small circles to prep for pirouettes.

Such a good baby

Riding on a square
I need to do more of this. It's really good at TC's stage even just to get there to be more definition between corners and circles in tests. It tests whether I have him on the outside rein. It tests the straightness. It's just awesome in general.
Make it harder: quarter walk or quarter canter pirouettes
We aren't quite ready for this, but I do a LOT of work on a square with horses learning walk and canter pirouettes. It helps to isolate the in and the out of the pirouettes, which are often times the hardest parts.

Lateral work
There's not much room for a lot of lateral work at the trot, because we cover too much ground and I want to keep that tendency in him, but we can really get our walk lateral work on. I need to revisit turns on the forehand this winter, especially the responsiveness to my aid in them. I also want to do some leg yield zig zags. And we'll continue getting comfortable with shoulder-in and haunches-in. Unfortunately again TC isn't very laterally supple, so the lateral work is something I'm going to have to do every single day. But because he isn't supple, lateral work feels like a chore so I avoid it. Bad.

Miss trail riding

In hand work
I want to start getting TC used to more dressage focused in hand work. I think when the arena gets too crowded or he is too up, we'll be doing some in hand work in the round pen. The first thing I want to teach him is the square halt like a trick. I'm really bad about teaching that in my horses. Rico almost never halted square until we got to the FEI levels. And even then it was questionable. So I think an easy thing for us to work on to introduce working in hand would be a square halt.

Along the same lines, we'll be starting the very beginning of piaffe training. Mostly I just want him to be used to Alfredo's techniques before we see him for the first time probably a year from now depending on how strong he is. The beginning is easy on his legs, it's mostly just me touching his hind legs with a whip and him having to pick up just that hind foot. Given how uncoordinated the horse seems to be with his legs, that is going to take a good year.

The passage training may not be started for a while, especially with a horse who doesn't need more incentive to paw. To start Rico, I taught him the beginnings of Spanish walk. In my client's Alfredo clinic on Tuesday, Alfredo actually taught me how to officially put passage on a horse, so I'm excited to practice some more on her horse and then when TC is ready, I will have had a lot of practice.

I even miss this trail that always creeped him out

And now to bookmark my own post on my phone so that when I get into the covered arena and longingly stare out at the outdoor arena, I can actually get some work done. PLEASE give me more exercises if you have them for working in a small space.

Spirals, Transitions, and Pony Cuddles

As expected, life has been really weirdly different and pretty shitty having to suddenly move out of my amazing house and down to the ranch. The internet here is slow, the commute sucks real bad, but I get to wake up every day to the sight of my favorite fat bay horse and baby TC is a 3 minute drive away. This is especially helpful because, as he's turning four very very soon (or may have already turned four, dunno his birthday but I've been told it was the second week of April), I'm hoping to bump him up to riding 4x per week. I also want to add Rico into the mix too!

I've always heard that until 5 or 6, they should be ridden the same number of days per week that they are old. I dunno where I heard it from or how correct it is, but it stuck with me. With TC being two slow growing breeds (warmblood and friesian), I wanted to take it slow like this with him. Three days a week has been totally enough to get him fit enough to do what I want and trained well enough, but I would like to get on him 4x per week. So the plan is to add Mondays to go Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, with ideally one of those days being a trail ride.

Gotta work on that tension

In other news, my job interview is scheduled for TOMORROW, which is intimidating. I have everything all ready to go, including a portfolio of my work, which is becoming more of a norm in my industry (and as it is so new, there are no fucking examples out there for exactly this position and I just grabbed random work to throw in it so we'll see). I'm totally going to look like I'm trying too hard, but that's okay. This week I've seriously applied to maybe 5 other positions (complete with cover letter/trying) and thrown my resume at probably 8-10 other random positions that I likely won't get but still want to get my name out there. Job hunt round II officially begins now.


Today I got to ride baby TC for the first time since the show. Poor guy doesn't have a blanket (he will be getting a bunch of them when I buy him!) so he was out in the cold rain this week. That, in addition to the extra work and the lack of food for the last few days, meant that he was looking kind of skinny again. I'm extra sensitive to it because I'm used to superfat Rico who looks like he ate a medium sized pony. So Ali told me that I could give him a hay bag whenever I wanted. I might stop by tomorrow (since I can go every day if I want now! Silver linings, seriously) and let him have a flake for lunch.

I opted not to longe him because there was a spring break camp happening in the arena. I couldn't avoid it. Because of the rain, the field wasn't useable, so TC and I came into the arena amidst crazy crazy kids.

Can't wait to use the field again!

I stood and talked to western trainer who runs the camp and she kept apologizing. I was like NO DON'T APOLOGIZE! I want TC to be super bombproof anyway, so kids galloping around out of control on buzzy horses with lots of screaming and shrieking and general craziness going around is quite excellent for him.

Not only did he put up with that in the best possible way (standing in the middle of the ring, resting a foot, with the reins loose), once as the kids were off the horses, they went running around in the roundpen, outside of the arena, and even a little inside the arena before they were herded away. TC never reacted. In the round pen (attached to the arena), a longe whip being waved around and around in the air by a shrieking kid while another one is running around? Nothing. He quietly cantered by on a loose rein and didn't even look! God this horse, you guys, he keeps getting better and better. He's only just barely four years old! I think Rico would have even looked at that.


So onto the actual ride. Overall it was a nice ride. I had really wanted to work on circles and getting him better connected and responding to the outside aids, but there was simply no room for the exercises I chose. The little kids were gone but older kids were in there and the arena just isn't meant for four people to be riding in it (it's slightly bigger than a short court).

We did some leg yields along the fence (these are pretty good but only when I release my inside shoulder back), turns on the forehand (please stop pulling my arms out omg), and I introduced spiraling in and leg yielding out on a circle. He felt AMAZING on the spiral in and out at the walk, this is definitely an exercise we will be doing every single day. We started the trot work but like I said above, too many people to get an actual circle to work on.

So cute and so unsteerable

So we switched gears to transitions. The walk trot transitions are getting better, but every now and then he just loses it at the walk and can't trot without wiggling and being smacked by the end of the reins (really need to bring a whip). I don't know why, I think it's a relaxation issue though.

We had some really nice transitions, and as they got better, he offered me a stretch circle. Well, stretch-like. He stretched longer and lower than he had ever done before, which is REALLY not saying much, but it was a massive effort on his part so I told him how great he was.

After that, we popped into canter. The canter transitions were excellent, including even a walk-three steps of trot- canter transition! He thought cantering was really fun, even in the small arena, western trainer was like "he looks like he's having so much fun!"

At the canter, my primary goal is to get him to use himself better to develop a better quality canter. I think two things are going on: first, he doesn't use his neck or back enough in the canter so he never really "lets go" while cantering. Second, and a possible explanation of the above, he simply doesn't have the muscle to hold up a big canter, so he stifles himself.

So to address this goal, riding him more and working him in the chambon in the canter should address my second point- building muscle to help him hold himself up a bit better. I'm also going to try to canter him primarily in the larger areas- the neighbor's arena and the field, rather than the small covered arena at the barn.

After the canter, I let him be done so I could pump some food into him before I had to go get a clients' horse out.

I sat and cuddled with TC a little bit. I don't normally do that because 1.) I want him to stay an investment horse for me so that he is easier to sell and 2.) I don't want him to be a jerk about needing attention all the time (and being rude to get it), but I've been kind of meh the last few days and needed pony cuddles.

So cute and cuddly

And let me tell you, this pony is so cuddly. He stuck his nose on my face and let me squish it against my cheek for a while, then stuck his whole face in my arms and let me hug him. He was in pony heaven, but he shouldn't get used to it! It's nice to see him like this though, I can see an AA or a JR being soooo happy to find something so completely bombproof, cuddly, and presumably one day trained!