Does What He Wants

Saturday after my long day I still managed to ride Rico. I sort of had to convince myself to do it though. Nothing like the Fitbit hanging over my head, reminding me that I spent the majority of the day sitting to motivate me to move.

I rode him after dinner and it was an awesome ride. Rides have been hit or miss in the last couple weeks with Rico. Whether it's his joints/neck pain, the fact that I've had more not-Megan-riders on him lately, or just me being a crazy person, I don't know. But he's been a little extra lazy and he occasionally throws in unclean changes, which is very odd.

But Saturday he came out to play and I was happy to have my horse back.

Rico's new best friend came cantering up to us

One thing I did do is use the BOT quickwraps for tacking up. I'm planning on using them with TC- basically putting them on the moment I get to the barn and leaving them on until after I put the saddle on. So I figured Rico could use them too, he's getting the star treatment until the dumb baby horse comes home and takes all his stuff.

I got on and let him zip past the arena and out to the road like he always tries to do. We came back to the arena after walking around the corner, but he got to have a moment of victory.

In the arena I mostly wanted to work on my position. We're only a little more than two weeks away from my first rides on TC (YAY) so I'm hoping to really work on myself leading up to that. I actually have now put my stirrups down a full two holes since I started riding TC, one hole since this fall. I raised them in the first place because on young big moving horses who buck, I need shorter stirrups. As he was better about being round and not darting randomly around the arena, I was able to lower them, but I never got them down to where they once were.

And when I got back on Rico, I was so used to the shorter stirrups that I was riding with short stirrups on all horses. So they're back down to where they belong! I'll still probably put them up a hole when I ride TC for a few weeks, but I'm hoping to be down on hole 13 permanently fairly soon.

So cute!

As always, we started in canter. He felt super good in the bridle and right on my seat, although not super forward. We did a few single flying changes and they felt good. The left-right change tends to get real crooked/kicking and so we worked a little on that in warm up.

Then we played a little in a forward-moving piaffe. I don't want him to have to do it on the spot too much anymore since it puts unnecessary pressure on his hocks. Piaffe is fun but it's not my favorite, I mostly do it to get him engaged and thinking more collected, and an on the spot piaffe isn't necessary for that.

Passage though, that is my favorite so we did a little bit of that. He lost the walk to passage a little bit, he takes a trot step before really getting the height. And with a couple of non-Megan rides, the tempo got a bit too fast so I brought it slower, which he seemed to appreciate actually. I think people who haven't done the pi/pa a lot struggle with how SLLLOOOWWWW the passage is. It really doesn't cover a ton of ground, and the tempo is quite slow.


And as much as the piaffe and passage are two of Rico's best movements, the reality is that he learned to passage in November of 2013 and then we stopped really training it in October of 2014. So he only has a year of training on them. This means that riding it poorly results in him changing the way he does it, vs say a shoulder-in that he's had on him for most of his dressage career so you can fuck that up all you want and I'll still be able to get a good one out of him without working on it.

But I don't mind, I'm not trying to compete this horse anymore and honestly the look on peoples' faces when they first sit his passage and hearing my friend tell the rest of our friends at dinner the other night how wonderful and trained my horse is makes rides like this where I sort of have to pick up the pieces totally worth it!

They were all cuddly, so cute!

Back in canter I mostly worked on my position, getting my leg to be a little longer, which is hard for me since it wants to creep up to the block. Rico is super about letting me drop my leg down, as it makes him collect more since that's how I would always work on collection. So we played in a few different canters while I made myself stop tipping forward with my left shoulder (a new-ish issue I noticed while riding a horse at my new barn that has mirrors) and worked to not sink into any sort of rotation with my hips. Sometimes I get a little hula-dancer-y at the canter. Inside seatbone forward, emphasize the forward and back, don't fucking wiggle.

We also did the tempi changes and for the first time in a while, Rico was kind of a shit about them. Not in the old-horse-losing-strength way, but in the way that used to drive Tracey and I nuts. Here's how it would go:

Tracey: show me the threes
Me: rides a line of threes
Rico: throws in a two for funzies
Tracey: Megan, there was a two in there, do the threes
Me: I'm trying
Rico: bahahaha
Me: goes back across the diagonal
Rico: starts the twos before I even ask for any changes
Tracey: MEGAN NO, THE THREES DO THE THREES
Me: I AM TRYING I AM NOT ASKING FOR TWOS
Rico: lol

So I headed across the diagonal and rode the threes and he ended with a two. I thought that my aid was probably off so I came around again and he STARTED in twos. I don't want to get after him, I mean no one cares now whether he's doing twos or threes. I kept laughing, but was also mildly frustrated with him. Damnit Rico, I talk about how trained and perfect you are and then you pull shit like this.

So cute

In the end we walked down the road and visited Rico's new best friend. It was such a fun ride. We don't get rides like that all the time, mostly because I don't think I've quite determined how many rides a week and in what order I can do to maximize rides like this. Too many rides a week and he gets lazy, too little rides a week and he gets unfit. Trail rides make his coffins hurt so I limit those. It's a balance that I haven't put much effort into figuring out. But when things come together like on Saturday, he's super fun.

Ponies and Beer and Tacos

On Monday, it turned out that L was going to be just a little bit up the road from Rico and I, so we made arrangements for her to come by the ranch! It actually worked out well that I've been riding Rico more, since now he's at least fit enough for a fun shortish ride vs a quick pony ride.

One of them had more fun than the other

When she got there, we went right up to get Rico, no time to waste!

I had been nice and told her to bring her saddle. Having ridden Ramone both in my saddle and hers, I desperately preferred mine- not because hers is uncomfortable, but my knees feel like they were up by my ears- I could imagine it'd go the other way. Nothing like riding a horse trained in a completely different discipline AND having to fight my saddle's blocks at the same time.

Luckily her magic saddle that fits all horses fit Rico, and after throwing white polos on (for optimal dressage fanciness), and the pelham on my snaffle bridle, she hopped on.

Rico can be ridden in any bit, but he goes really well in the pelham and always has. I don't have the wheymouth he likes, and as I said on Tuesday, he actually is going well in the one he doesn't like but he gets behind the leg easier and I knew he'd be lazy for L no matter what. He goes well in the snaffle too, but you really have to get on his case about lightness/roundness and I just felt like this ride was more for L playing with Rico's tricks and less about making her trot on a 20m circle and get my dumb horse off his forehand.

Rico the jumping horse?

The best horse

L has been the first person to come see/ride Rico from the blogosphere, meaning she first "met" him on my blog, which is interesting. I was really hoping Rico would be good for her, not that he's ever bad, he's just sometimes lazy. I was also interested to get her take on him. He's quite trained and very willing, but he's a totally different ride than Ramone and Carlos and trained in a totally different discipline.

The first thing she said when she swung up on him was that he was SUPER wide and called him an overgrown Thelwell pony. That is super accurate. The horse has withers but his lungs spring like no other. You'd think that'd mean there was lots of room for his lungs but the way the horse breathes when he works a little bit, it's very likely that his stomach takes up much of that room.  And his heart, awww. 

Tempis!

Expressive upward transitions

We wandered around the arena and Rico immediately knew that an educated butt was on him. Rico tries to decipher who is on him to determine how much he can get away with not doing. He's always willing, and that's what I adore about him, but he wants to know right away whether he can slack a little bit.

I told L just a few things about him- first, if you teach him that you'll nag him, you'll have the same problems I had two years ago where he'll randomly halt in your work. Second, if you trot before you canter him, he will feel like a broken down crippled horse.

So after the walk, we cantered. And that's when Rico was SUPER confused. L's aids were slightly off for him because of the stirrup length I think so he had no idea what she wanted and kept offering passage instead of canter. He's like I know you're educated and want me to do things but I don't know what you want so here, have this shitty passage.

Finally she cantered him around for warm up and we did a couple single flying changes. Rico has great changes so it's just a matter of keeping him forward before and after and keeping his neck on straight so that you get the response you want. He'd rather do changes than counter canter, so he waits for an aid that sort of seems like a change aid and he's on it.

More tempis, Rico would like to do them as slow as possible

Cantering really helped Rico figure out L's aids, he's a smart horse and does want to be good so he tries to adapt himself to other people to the best of his ability. He still keeps the effort minimal, but he doesn't actively work against his rider, which is something I just adore about him. I feel like it speaks the tiniest bit to my training as well that someone else can just hop on him and school a bunch of the Grand Prix movements.

Back in walk for a bit we talked about piaffe and passage.

I had brought down my driving whip and bamboo to help L get the feel of it, and to get Rico putting a little more effort into them. He's a little uneven in the passage these days and isn't sitting much in the piaffe, which is totally fine, but it'd be nice to improve them a tiny bit whenever I have a good rider on his back.

We started in piaffe and Rico mistook the aid a little bit and reared (woops, but his rears are small and L rode it without a problem) before settling into a pretty good piaffe. The passage was fan-fucking-tastic with the bamboo helping him out and L lost a stirrup because it was so big and we both dissolved into giggles agreeing that the passage is the most fun ever. I never want there to be a time where I don't have a fucking awesome passage to ride. Like, TC had better step up his game as Rico edges closer to full retirement. But for now, Rico's passage will do. And it's a great one despite the unevenness right now.

Piaffe, Rico's favorite part is getting told he did a good job

Next up was piaffe and passage transitions, which she rode without too much of my help! Rico isn't easy to ride those on because some dumb person trained him to walk in them because they kept taking their leg off. I told L not to take her leg off but to slide the leg back to piaffe and then forward to passage. She rode it basically as well as Rico was capable of doing it and he complied easily.

After we finished up with that work, we headed into canter again. I told L about the tempi changes- all you need to do is keep him forward and straight in between the changes and he'll do them. She got some 3s and 4s and even got a 2! We also did some school canter, Rico can't quite canter on the spot anymore but he can still get close.

School canter sorta

We finished up with a walk pirouette and some general trot work, where Rico offered his fancy trot (trot + a little passage feeling to get him up in the shoulders). Rico was only a bit sweaty, so we wandered back to the barn and I grabbed Riot in my dressage saddle so that we could walk down the road and back.

Along the road is a wild plum tree, which hasn't managed to kill me yet, so we stopped for some plums and it felt like the ultimate Saddle Club adventure!

After riding, we tasted some of my dad's beer (he's a chemist and he home brews) and then headed out for lunch. I'm not much of a beer drinker but man a cold beer on a hot day after riding was amazing.

Passage

A bit more passage right before a canter transition, he was a bit
uneven so the video didn't turn out that great

For lunch we went to the local seafood place and surprise, ran into a couple of my friends from my new barn. They opted to join us for our lunch. We talked ponies for a LONG time and realized what a small world it was, all of us knowing some of the same people from various times in our life. It's amazing how getting horse people together always turns even the most introverted of people into the chattiest people.

It was such a great day, we're definitely going to have to do it again! And hopefully go on more Saddle Club Trail Ride adventures too. 

Back on the Favorite

Now that we're down to the last two months of TC's rehab and my vacation from riding challenging horses, I'm really eager to get in shape for his return.

I joined a gym on Tuesday and immediately suffered. I was running late so missed a class and just decided to take it easy on the rower. My plan had been to do some back squats afterward but the weights were being used. And honestly, after 2x 500m, I was toast. Like my back was burning, shoulders were aching, I felt like death. I used to be able to row a 5k and then do a second workout and go riding later that day. 500 meters was the warm up of my warm up in crossfit.

I went again on Wednesday and Thursday, and have plans to go tonight. Death, I feel like death. 

But the gym is only one piece of it, I need to be riding fit too. You know who else poops out after twenty minutes of work? This guy.

I gave him a haircut and he looks so much younger!

In addition to me needing to get in shape, I want to get Rico going a little bit more. I have a student showing Fourth who wants to move up to PSG this year (I will have an FEI student yay) who needs some practice with her tempi changes. I also want to get my SIL riding him more and have a few people I've offered rides to and I feel bad pulling them off of him after 15 minutes. 

Luckily Rico has been moving waddling around, he and Riot go out every day to the pasture and they trot/canter both in and out. So it's not like he's been sitting around like I have. My main goal is to get a bit of muscle on him and ask him to work for longer periods of time so that I can actually teach a lesson on him. I feel bad charging for a lesson if the horse I'm providing isn't fit enough! And I don't want to put Rico at risk. 

Hi animal

I've ridden him a couple times since I last talked about him. The rides tend to be the same but I'll describe one of them (the day that I'm writing this post).

At first, I worked primarily on the quality of the gaits. Rico has lost a bit of his trot because he hasn't had his joints (hocks/coffins) injected in a year and a half. We've talked about doing the coffins (I want his hocks to fuse) for my mom so that Rico is more comfortable on the trails, but that hasn't come up yet. Maybe this summer sometime.

But with a little passage injected into the trot, I got some really great steps. His default canter is also not as collected as it used to be, so we worked on that as well. I forgot how freakishly sensitive this horse is to my seat. You can collect him just off the seat (in fact, if you try to use your reins other than for the connection, he splats into the ground, fun!) and he turns exceptionally well off the outside thigh. It sounds weird, but sometimes even FEI horses can be tricky to steer, BFF sometimes takes a good tug and crowding him with the outside leg. 

I took that feeling into the trot and did a bunch of figure-8s. Rico wasn't as willing to track right (and afterward I saw that my girth had rubbed him- sorry about your fat armpits, pony!) as he was to track left. He really wants to dump onto the right rein, tipping his wither right, so I did some spiraling out to connect him better on the left side. It helped, but you know, he isn't super even (and honestly never has been). 

Diving for grass

We did get to the tempis, I want to make sure that the threes and fours are solid, and they are not. I think being in the hackamore was probably a bad idea since I struggled to keep the straightness.

The first line was a clusterfuck of changes. Some were clean, some were shockingly not. For a horse who basically anyone can get clean change out of, well, woops. Part of the problem was that the day I'm writing about, I forgot spurs. Never forget your weapons when going into battle with the laziest animal.

I straightened up and rode the hell out of the next line of threes and they were good. We then played with the fours, which I've always been kind of terrible at. The twos have a great rhythm, as do the threes. There's just too much time to fuck up in the fours. Accurate representation of what goes through my head during tempi changes:

Ones; OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD
Twos: one-change-one-change
Threes: one-two-change-one-two-change
Fours: one-what is life anyway is there any real point to it other than ponies?-OH NO THREE- CHANGE CHANGE CHANGE DO IT NOW DO IT NOW

Sorry horse, you may get the perks of retirement, but you still have
to work! (before the mane pull)

I did manage to do a solid line of fours by the end. Once as the tempis are fairly automatic, I'm planning on hauling over to the covered ring across the road to school more of them. Unfortunately the arena at the ranch is only a short court, so I can only fit three changes across the diagonal. I'd like to be able to let my student school five (and not have to squeeze them in), since I think for some riders, having to plan for five changes can be challenging.

It will also let me school a bit of the zig zag too! We did get to do some lateral work in the short court though. He's definitely not as supple as he used to be, although I was pleasantly surprised that everything seems to be surviving his retirement fairly well. 

His shoulder-in is still fairly awesome. It's really great to the right, he basically just plops right into it and stays there with minimal input from me. To the left he does the same, though tends to weight the right shoulder too much, which makes the shoulder-in feel downhill. The outside front leg needs to really reach and take a big step forward, he feels a bit like I'm trying to put the movement on a low level horse.

The haunches-in was okay, I really just never got a good haunches-in on this horse. He still gets stuffed into the inside rein and doesn't step into the outside rein. I definitely want to school more haunches-in on other horses. For some reason, Rico just brings out the refusal to use the inside leg in me. Ugh. I had the same issues in the half pass, though the canter was much better than the trot, as per usual.

From last weekend

I didn't do a lot of piaffe/passage. I'm thinking that if I want to ride him more, I should cool it with the pi/pa work all the time. So I'll be limiting that to once a week or so. I just really don't want him to break down too much faster than he already has been.

I'm also not schooling pirouettes for a long while, if not ever again. I just don't like doing them on him, they feel difficult and labored, as they always have, but there's no reason for him to do them anymore. He's not great at them, like he is at pi/pa and the 2s/3s/4s, and he still negatively affects my riding in them, making me anticipate, lean forward, and pull. So it's best for both of us if I get my pirouette work in on other horses and he can preserve his hocks a bit longer. I feel the same way about the ones.

He is so cute

Overall I've had some really fabulous couple rides on him. I'm super stoked to have my horse back at a reasonable weight. As we were cantering along and he was super light in the bridle, collected, and turning completely off my upper leg... it just felt like home. Hopefully more rides will happen this weekend! 

Typical Behavior All Around

Saturday afternoon after driving almost three hours in the morning, I got home and figured I hadn't driven quite enough that day (regrets, so many regrets).

So I hopped in the car and headed an hour south to see my favorite.

I was still feeling terrible, this is the never ending plague cold, but man is Rico just the best pick me up, even if I could barely ride him.

I didn't leave my house from Sunday night until Wednesday
morning so I did the most crazy-cat-lady thing ever: cat photoshoot

Lucky Rico has been out on pasture all day for over a week so unlucky me had to pick out his damn feet, which were packed with mud. I had to grab a screwdriver, but managed to get his feet all picked out. Then had to go sit down and catch my breath.

He wasn't as disgusting as he was the last time I had to brush him, which was a welcomed change. He is shedding like it's his job though, so I got a lot of his hair off of him. TC is also shedding, though smells much better as they keep him bathed. Rico's worst nightmare! And TC's by the sound of what he's been doing about the wash rack.

I actually put on a saddle, bridle, and polo wraps (glorious bright blue camouflage ones too, gotta be fancy sometimes, Rico) on Rico, and real boots with spurs on myself. I even grabbed the stock whip just in case he needed some more motivation (he did but only twice). That horse was going to work! If I could just... stop... coughing.

so cute!

Rico was great to ride. We started with some canter to warm up and he felt downright strong in the forward-and-back exercise I played with. Just wanting to make sure I had access to his different canters from the get go- especially without him getting crooked, which is what he tends to like to do.

I read back through all the lessons I took on him (you really run out of internet after 2 days in bed) and straightness is such a theme in every lesson. This gives me hope for TC since that had been one of the main things I focused on all last year. I'm excited to take some lessons on him this summer with Tracey to get him all straightened out so that we don't have as many issues as Rico and I did. Reading back through the lessons made me appreciate that, while I didn't want one to begin with, having a hot horse means that I won't be so focused on forward. Because that was another theme.

I gave Rico a nice break after warm up to hang out before starting the piaffe and passage. The piaffe was pretty good, although leaning on his left front, which is pretty normal these days. His right hind has the ringbone and has always been weaker (maybe because the ringbone was developing? unsure). The passage felt powerful and not as uneven as he usually has been. We even did some transitions between piaffe and passage, which I haven't done in months and months. I love coming out of a good piaffe into a really powerful passage, that feeling is so fun!

the best model, she was staring at birds

At the canter I schooled the changes, which were surprisingy obnoxious. Rico usually has really good changes, and even when they're not, they're always clean, which they were on Saturday. But they were what I would consider labored. The twos took a lot more effort than usual. I mean he's the sort of horse you point across the diagonal and swing your legs wildly and he just sighs and does two tempis. So effort means that I actually had to ride them, oh what horror is this that I actually have to ride? But I at least got the single changes pretty easy.

We also did a couple of pirouettes. The right one fell apart and the left one was good. Sounds about right. I realized that I have a lot more anxiety about pirouettes when I'm in the saddle with all my weapons than when I'm on bareback with just a set of western reins to smack him with. Interesting.

Either way, I think I'm going to put a hold on schooling those, he just doesn't feel strong in them and I don't want to ruin his soundness for a movement that I don't particularly enjoy. Passage is one thing... pirouettes? Meh.

Pfft clean apartment before taking pictures of cat? nah

I lasted about twenty minutes and then was exhausted. To make matters work, I stubbornly agreed to dinner that night with some family friends and basically spent the entire night coughing and feeling like shit. Then drove home late, couldn't fall asleep despite copious amounts of nyquil and woke up the next day extremely sick. Just in time for the horse show, which I barely got through physically.

But my student did well and trainer friend scraped a 60 and change at Grand Prix despite winning the warm up. And I spent the entire show leaning against things and taking pictures that I *actually* managed to edit on Monday because I spent the entire day in bed feeling like shit just in time for another day (Tuesday) spent in bed feeling like shit. Maybe next week I'll be able to work an entire week. Boo.

I'm back at work today though and feeling as normal as I've felt in a couple weeks! Which isn't saying much... but still!

Working on Stillness

Saturday morning I got up and decided to drive most of the way down to possible future far away barn and see Rico. I had texted my mom the night before to let her know I was coming and sort of jokingly said "add horses to my list if you want" and I was assigned all three horses.

Such a fun Saturday

Up first as always, was Rico. I love riding Rico. He's just a breath of fresh air sometimes.

Most of my day with Rico was spent brushing the caked mud off of his body. He was super gross. It took so long that I just threw the bareback pad and hackamore on him again. No point in taking the time to put on riding boots and a saddle and a bridle.

It was warm, so the ride was kept short. He let me play with the pirouettes again. I don't know why he's letting me. It's either that he thinks he has no choice, or he realized that they're easier than they were because I'm letting him do them a bit big and crappy. Once again the left was great and the right is blocked by his right hind not liking to take weight- most likely due to his new fun ringbone that I found a few months ago.

So unnecessarily dirty. Also this is Rico with no muscle, still
better than TC with no muscle!

I played with twos, and once again he offered me ones so we did a few couplets. I noticed that since I had been schooling changes on my students' horse, I was not as invisible with my aids/body as I usually am. Rico couldn't give less of a shit about what I do on him, but I like to use him to fix me up a bit. It's nice to be able to work on myself sometimes.

So I did a bunch of transitions just working on my upper body staying perfectly still throughout. It's something Tracey taught me that I assume she learned (or maybe not) from Mary Wanless because Mary does it in this video. I worked really hard at the walk canter and canter walk, only getting slightly in front of him a couple of times in the canter to walk. And not at all behind or ahead in the walk to canter, woohoo. Then we went on to the changes and my body was completely still. Yay!

If TC moves to the barn near Rico, I totally want to ride Rico twice a week (if I'm not totally exhausted from the commute, which I probably will be) so that he can stay in a bit better shape. It's been so fun to work completely on myself and just play with the fun movements. I'd love if he stayed a little fitter so I could really ride him.

So hairy

Riot was also on my list. We had fun working on transitions between what I can only describe as a makeshift collected running walk and extended running walk. I really want to get him covering more ground in the running walk and then being able to slow down without pacing.

After that he was really leaning on my left rein, as he always does, so we did some leg yields and spiraling out, then tested the bend on a figure-8. I had a lot of control over where we were going and in what bend, which is not something I could have said at the beginning of the ride.

We kept it short and sweet, because afterward, I dumped Stretch off my list (Stretch thanked me for that) and stole my mom's dog, Ruby, to go on a run!

The worst running partner

The last time I was on that particular trail was when I had a very sound baby horse over Thanksgiving. Luckily trail running with a dog hell bent on chasing squirrels is quite enough to take my mind completely off of the baby horse.

We did the shortest loop, which is 4 miles. We clocked in at just over an hour, which I thought was good since most of the time I was walking and wheezing and then stopping to take pictures. I did run probably 1.5 of the miles though, mostly on the flat ground or when it sloped slightly downward. Too steep uphill and I couldn't make it more than a few steps but too steep downhill and my joints were hurting.

Come about 3 miles in and Ruby was super done, she laid down in the grass to take a nap. Uh no. She was a sport getting back though. That's totally going to me when I can get back to running. Officially signed up for the 5k yesterday so the money is paid and it's happening.

Check out my rescue baby friend! She's two and has a really
nice shoulder if you ask me... Once as she can be handled, I want
to see how she moves ;)

That night I bribed L with a ride (so my entire weekend of driving wasn't entirely boring) and we headed up north to get delicious Thai food with Nicole, Peony, and Andy!

So much fun, we need to do these things more often.

The Waiting Game

That title is misleading because this feels like a post that should be about TC. I am playing the waiting game with him. Wait wait wait until he comes back. And then wait wait wait until he regains some form of sanity. And then it's back to the normal waiting that comes with having a young horse.

Love my trail runs, even if I feel like I'm going to die

Another innocent soul suffering from having to wait to do things is my student's horse and this post is actually about her.

My student is debuting at Fourth level in a week and a half! She's brought along her own horse, who we got when she was four years old and green broke. Now, two and a half years later, she is going Fourth. I think two and a half years after TC was four and green broke, we'll be inching along at Second. Different type of horses.

She's all set to go, with enough movements that are well ridden and not too many weak points. Although you can't get this far without having some issues though, right? And hers are turning out to be the tempi changes.

Looking out on the valley, I could almost see the hill that TC
and I would canter up at our old barn

The root of the problem lies in the horse's impatience. One of the hardest things with this horse has been convincing her that she has to wait for an aid. She thinks she knows everything. This sort of confidence has led her through the levels rather more rapidly than a horse who struggles with confidence. But this confidence means that she gets irritated when you tell her that she is wrong- such as making her wait for an aid. She'll even sometimes scoot through the change so she beats you to it.

The other issue we have is a change that tends to be unclean when she is off balance in any way. This is related to the waiting, because as you go to set her up for the change (as in, get her in the correct balance) she changes before you get done with setting her up, leading to an unclean change.

After seeing the state of the tempis last lesson, I offered to drive across the bay to do a training ride yesterday. Traffic was surprisingly good both getting there (I actually was able to stop to get food rather than starving through the ride) and on the way back. Craziness!

So nice to have this right behind my house (though I'm not fit
enough to run there from my house!)

I started with touching on the school canter, since I had schooled pirouettes on Rico last weekend. I was really pleased with how maneuverable this horse is. Much better than Rico, really hoping that the half pirouettes come on relatively easily. After that, I played with the changes to get a good idea of what we were dealing with. It seemed random at first when they're clean and when they're not. Last night they weren't super clean, which always happens when we work on tempis vs just single changes.

Normally with an unclean change, I can feel what is going on. So the first change I realized she had gotten a bit heavy on the right front leg, causing her to prop the hind end up, swap, then swap the front on the second step. So when I went to do the next change, I made sure she was even in both reins. But then she got crooked and was unclean again. So I fixed the straightness and then she got low in front. It seemed completely random. Sometimes clean, sometimes not.

The one thing that persisted was that she really didn't let me set her up for very long. I couldn't work on the quality of the canter within the straightness that I needed because she would just swap.

One of the biggest learning curves after teaching a horse changes is teaching them to change from an actual aid. In the first few months (or longer) teaching changes, you kind of have to just let them change to get them on. You can't just teach a horse to change, then immediately punish them for doing it during the counter canter. Hence why a lot of people put them on over the winter.

But this mare has had changes for a year now, we put them on last winter. And she's really never been good at waiting for anything.

So fun, so tiring

So the main problem isn't the straightness or the quality of the canter or the balance. It's the fact that I can't make any adjustments without her changing after the first one.

I went to school the quality of the canter, basically set her up for the change and then make sure that I could hold that set up canter for a while. I started on the counter canter, going down the long side. I half halted to get her more uphill and she changed... not clean because she was not straight. I halted, cantered again, and then she was crooked so I straightened her and she changed. Not clean because she wasn't forward enough. But none of the changes were on my aid, I wasn't asking.

So we did a ton of work on straightness. Every time she changed we halted. If my legs don't swing, she does not change. Over and over again. Straightening, setting her up completely for the change and just holding that canter.

Crossing the bay bridge today

As I rounded the short side and headed down the long side on the counter canter, I set her up for the change, made her wait, and then swung my leg.

Clean change.

We have a while to go. My student was there so we discussed it and she's got some good homework before her Sunday lesson. NO flying changes until then and then I'll get on again. Both horse and rider are known for pulling off the impossible, so I'm sure that by the show next week, we'll be good enough. Honestly, even though one change is unclean sometimes, she's still probably fine for the tempis. They have no count and the horse is very happy to do the changes.

Pushing Buttons

Saturday I taught a lesson and then spent the day with my SIL in the city. It was so fun! We went to Superbowl City, which, for two people who could not care less about football, was really awesome. The bay bridge had a light show and fireworks, so that was a blast. Then we packed onto the train like sardines and made it back to my town for tofu!

By Sunday, I was itching to ride a pony SO BADLY. I hadn't ridden in almost two weeks because of one thing or another. My initial pony riding plans were foiled by my friend's illness (she's fine), so I scheduled another lesson last minute and then headed down to ride Rico and Riot. I wanted to ride a pony, damnit.

I got to the ranch and saw that my mom was turning Rico and Riot out in the front yard to eat down some of the grass. It has better footing than the pastures and it means that no one has to mow. Nice!

He's pretty unkempt these days

I ruined Rico's day of eating by taking him out. But then I trusted him too much to stand ground tied and he got loose. He just trotted out to the grass and as I hurried over to grab him, I could tell that he was thinking about galloping around the property, but I caught him before he could act on his idea.

I just hopped on bareback with the hackamore, it was a little late to ride two before dark so there was no time to really put effort into tack.

The arena footing was surprisingly great and Rico felt as good as he's felt in a long time. He's been cooped up a bit, so I expected him to be stiff, but he really wasn't at all. He was actually super game... for Rico. So not putting in 100% effort to get out of work, probably just 90%.

We started at the trot but then almost immediately started the canter. I immediately got on his case for his laziness. He's proven time and time again that he isn't some old crippled horse, so he had better move when I asked him to. I need to get on with some spurs... and maybe a saddle next time. Instead I had my mud boots and the end of a pair of western reins. Good enough.

I groom my horses so thoroughly

We schooled EVERYTHING through Grand Prix for the first time in a long time. We started with a little piaffe and passage, then schooled some two tempis. The piaffe was pretty good and at first the passage was flat and terrible, but I motivated him and he gave me a lot more. The twos were foot perfect and he even dumped some ones (three in a row! whaaat) into them accidentally.

He gave me an ugly zig zag in trot and canter, but that was my fault. He got ahead of me in the half pass like he always does, and then kind of took advantage of me being a half step behind him. Woops. Not used to riding that anymore as all the horses I've done zig zags on recently have been pretty simple. We also did shoulder-in, which was probably the best shoulder-in I've felt in... exactly one year and two months.

I totally made him do canter pirouettes, just one full one in each direction. The left was downright GOOD- six solid steps right on the spot. Like I would have taken him into a show with that shit. The right was to be expected, he did it but it was hard to keep it small. Just like the good old days.

He kept offering passage after that, so we did some more of it, playing with the elevation in the collected trot with passage-trot-passage transitions. That's probably my favorite thing to do- work on the quality of the trot using passage. It's so fun to feel the difference in elevation and cadence. I didn't want to stop riding him ever. I love riding that horse (when he's actually excited to be ridden, which is almost never).

So dirty

It was SO fun to have this kind of ride on him, he's been so meh lately, which I thought was our norm now. I never thought I'd feel him do a canter pirouette again. Love it.

And the icing on the cake is knowing that I like riding TC so much more, I'm so excited to get him back (back to focusing on the positive after my kind of depressing post yesterday!).


Riot was next, and I just threw the same tack on him- bareback pad and a hackamore. The wind was howling (it even hailed on my drive home, craziness!) and Riot was spooky, but the most he ever does is just splay his feet and snort at stuff.

My main goal is to get him into running walk, which is so much easier now! I told my dad that he was doing a good job and he said that he watched my last ride and was practicing what I was doing- spiraling in and out, then doing transitions from walk to running walk trying to eliminate the pacing.

The pacing was only there at the beginning, so I worked on getting him to cover more ground (extended running walk? lol). It was a blast to ride him around, and we only had one big spook at the gate closing. I always forget how fun he is.

Love the green hills

Here's a question for you people- has anyone ever had a horse click (not grind) their teeth while being ridden? When Riot is in running walk, he seems really relaxed, but his teeth click. It's almost like he hangs his mouth open (in the hackamore- no bit in his mouth) to relax and the head nods (part of the running walk) so his teeth click together. Nothing I did seemed to help it- I couldn't figure out a pattern. He is absolutely not stressed or upset- he lives an extremely easy life here. It doesn't bug me that he does it and we probably won't try to stop it, I'm just curious if anyone else has had experience with it.

Broken Down Old Horse

Thursday morning (of last week, wow these posts are late) I woke up feeling much better about everything, having dropped TC off at his rehab place the day before. I didn't have any anxiety about going out in the rain to make attempts at wrestling wraps off my horse, chasing his leg around to cold hose him, and then wrestling wraps back onto my horse. Instead, I headed up to the barn to ride Rico, who had been TC's babysitter and so hadn't been ridden yet that week.

Too busy being a babysitter and not looking like a GP horse

It was raining on and off, so I took my time brushing all the dried mud off of him, picking all the wet mud out of his feet, and tacking him up. Rico went from being very happy to get attention to being a bit pissed off that attention was leading to being ridden. 

When the weather cleared, I swung into the tack and it felt so wonderfully familiar. Although man, he is wide, how did my SI joint survive so many years of riding him?!

Rico and I went straight to the arena, just because if the footing wasn't good enough I figured I'd go down the road. Luckily, although wet, the footing was fine for a bit of fun. I gave him a nice long walk warm up, with lots of circles and serpentines to loosen him up before trotting. 

But Rico felt terrible to trot and canter. He hadn't been ridden since Thanksgiving, and even then I only really rode him once or twice and we didn't do much. Rico was super lazy, he refused to do any lateral work and was struggling in passage. His piaffe was more like a slow trot. The changes were still great though, and I played with a few lines of 3s and 2s. But what was clear was that Rico is finally getting to a point of retirement where I can't just pull him out and school all the GP stuff anymore. I was slightly bummed, but understood that he wasn't going to last forever.

Not going to be this horse forever unfortunately

I took him down the road to get a change of scenery. We found some cows and goats, and Rico's enthusiasm for bovines spooked them a bit. Poor cows. 

We had the ability to either continue down the road or head down the dirt access road. Continuing along the line of torturing Rico, I saw that about half way down the dirt road were some pretty big puddles. So we wandered down that road. Poor Rico was made to walk through a puddle, because it stretched across the whole road so there was no way that we were going around it. The puddle was about 4' wide or so, so he couldn't even step over it. Such torture. TC, on the other hand, would have enjoyed walking through the puddles, probably so much that he wouldn't have gotten out of the puddle though.

At the end of the road, we stared at the vineyards for a second. I thought about walking him across the road down to the winery, but I had to get back for Christmas eve dinner and I felt bad that Rico was so pathetically out of shape.

Love this view

I went to turn and Rico coiled a bit. So I tipped forward and let him go. My poor, broken down old horse, who can't manage a few steps of passage or piaffe, who wouldn't go on the bit anymore... bolted. 

He was galloping as fast as he could (not impressive speed) and was darting sideways, dodging the smaller puddles, and then two large ones. 

We were rounding on that big one, the one that goes across the whole road (with two 8' no climb wire fences along the road) and I went to slow him down a bit. I stretched up and pulled back, but Rico was in TC's bridle (fat snaffle on a horse who has never respected such a soft bit) and my failed attempt at a downward transition merely set him up beautifully...

for a huge JUMP across the puddle. 

Now, the horse is not an event horse, so he does not understand jumping across things. So he got right up to the base of the puddle, I felt his front end pad the ground, hind legs coil under him, and he cracked his back over the top of the puddle, landing on the other side fairly lightly for a horse who really doesn't do anything more athletic than taking long naps and eating impressive amounts of food.

Someone got a lot of Christmas presents!

Afterwards he celebrated. He struck out and bucked and leaped around. By the end of the access road he was back to trot but full of it. We turned onto the main road and there he finally gave me his powerful piaffe. He transitioned seamlessly to passage, which he felt more than capable of doing. 

It was raining by this point, so we trotted the last segment of the road back to the ranch. Damn horse was totally sound and round at this point. If it hadn't been raining, I would have put him back in the arena and made him do his work RIGHT, but I caved and took him in. 

I was so glad that he was feeling good, he had me worried for a second. But he's a manipulative asshole, he knows how to play the crippled old horse card when he thinks that my ideas suck. I love him for it, but I do miss having a horse who thinks that all my ideas are the BEST IDEAS EVER. Visiting TC later today hopefully.

Ruining Rico's Retirement

After I rode TC on Saturday, I had a little time before heading out to dinner, so I rode Rico. Poor Rico hasn't been out in a while and hasn't actually had a bit in his mouth in probably six months. I typically hop on him in the halter, bridleless, or the hackamore.

And then we go hang out with goats, Rico lives a rough life

I just recently sold my weymouth to a student and because of that, I have to order a new one (or put on the medium port that Rico hates). My new one isn't here yet because I don't really need it, so I threw Rico in the only snaffle bridle I had put together- TC's bridle.

Now, in the past, Rico has been a trickster in a fat snaffle like the one TC goes in. He takes it as a wonderful invitation to lean. It seems like all I had to do to get him super light in the snaffle is not ride him for months! I'm also working through my issues with rigidity on TC, so it's translating well to Rico too.

Hi mom! I'm going to yank out your shoulders
if you get on me because of reasons

I'll even lean on this dog!

I both love and hate (dislike is a better word) riding Rico these days. Obviously I love him to death, but riding him always makes me feel both greedy for the horse I had a year ago and sad that he's only serviceably sound. It's no fun to feel your horse struggle, even a little bit.

He does well, but he needs his hocks done obviously (last time was over a year ago). But to hell if I'm injecting a semi-retired horse's hocks so I can ride him every now and then for fifteen minutes. He's still happy to work, he just can't be ridden every single day for 45 minutes at the Grand Prix level. Fine, neither can I, my back sucks right now and my wrist is basically useless.

Back when we both were fit and awesome

This one time, Rico had abs

Rico was SO good for me the other day and genuinely seemed excited to work a little (A LITTLE). What a change from the horse who said NO to almost everything I suggested (okay to give him credit, he would argue that it was my fault for suggesting such terrible things like being forward and being straight).

We started with some trot work, playing in the lateral work and the quality of the trot. His regular trot is flat and short, possibly due to the pretty epic waddle he's developed after being just kind of fat for a while. But I was able to spice it up with a little passage. It got pretty impressive for a horse whose greatest accomplishment in the last nine months is not eating himself to death. The lateral work on that horse was so damn easy once as he was loosened up a bit. He just does shoulder-in, no body contortion or praying to the lateral work gods required. Weird. Half pass was not as strong but still so easy. I gotta get TC on the lateral work train.

I need to get on the lateral work train too

At the canter, I played with flying changes. Rico's changes are auto for a dressage horse even at this point. Set him up, swing your legs, try not to pull on his face. He threw in some two-tempis for funzies. I threw in two half pirouettes for funzies. He didn't think that was funzies and grunted the whole time. Pirouettes are fun! I miss playing with a school canter. TC just kind of runs like a maniac. Maybe one day we'll have a bit of collection in there somewhere.

Piaffe and passage still exist, with piaffe holding up better than passage. The passage is fine, it's just a bit uneven and flat. The piaffe feels just as good as it always has. Wtf indeed. This horse can piaffe for days.

It was extraordinarily fun to get back on Rico and play. There's something about a horse who is just completely yours, you know? Like for better or worse, I trained that animal. He knows all those tricks because of my hard, yet often misdirected and sometimes completely wrong, work. I'm so happy he retired sound enough to still go out and do some fun stuff.

The horse can piaffe. Not too enthusiastically, but he can do it.
Wow I never noticed but the shadow on his butt in this picture
makes it look like his loins suck, they don't

Sit! But don't stay...

In other AWESOME news, my brother happened to notice that one of my/our favorite comedians was coming to the area (not my area, my brother's, but they live in my old old town) in early November for a new show. On a weeknight. Starting at 8pm. An hour and a half away from my office. So I said fuck it and told him to get tickets for us. I'll be real tired at work the next day, but it's going to be SO WORTH IT. I just hope no one expects me to do anything other than write terrible unusable code that day. Maybe I can work from home and by home I mean my brother's couch. And by work I mean sleep.