Trainer Search

I once again find myself on a trainer search, and not just because I'm moving. I have wanted to find a new trainer after my last lesson with my previous trainer. She was an amazing trainer for me in the past, but I pretty much hate dressage after I ride with her. She likes TC well enough, but every other phrase out of her mouth is exasperation about how much better I used to be. It's become too frustrating and painful.

Will miss my lessons there though

I get that I'm not nearly the rider I used to be. Not even close. At the time, I was riding a TON of extra horses so could practice a lot more. I had a super safe, fun, older horse who was supremely talented and not at all explosive. We didn't have entire rides dedicated to keeping him from attacking birds, we just worked and worked. I never had to cut a ride short because I had a meeting. I had the time to do CrossFit 3-4x per week and I was strong as all get out. My other trainer once asked me why I was sweating in a lesson (I was sick and had to skip CrossFit for a few weeks). I sweat every ride now and I'm still figuring out how to sit the trot in my less fit form.

That's all totally fine with me, I knew this would happen when I switched from being a trainer to working a 9-5. But to hear how great I used to be and how disappointing it is for her to see me now? Not fun at all. I still work REALLY hard. Plus, I would not trade this out of shape, uncoordinated me for the stressed out insecure person I was before. I'm much happier now, even if my riding isn't as good. And I mean come on, COME ON, I am still a really decent rider.

So it's time to move on. She's a great trainer, I'd definitely recommend her to anyone in terms of her knowledge and persistence. She very much changed my riding completely and I would absolutely not have been a GP rider without her. I have so so much respect for her... but I can't handle the negativity in my life. I've done a great job in the last few years of gathering good people in my life and hanging onto them with dear life, but the other half of that is knowing when to let the negative people go. So it's time for a new trainer.

Oh well

I have a few requirements, which really differ from what I wrote in this post. It's just that I am now living a very different lifestyle and have a more sensitive (and much lower level) horse. I can't deal with the stuff I dealt with before. But some of it is very much the same.

1) I still can't ride with someone without their Gold medal, but I am more open to riding with someone without their Gold if they're particularly good at the Mary stuff. Like, riding with Kate a few weeks ago was really incredibly helpful, and she doesn't have her Gold just yet :) but as a regular trainer who I ride with every other week, definitely going to need them to have their Gold.

2) I still want someone who has produced horses from Training to Grand Prix. I am on that pathway and don't want someone who has never done what I am trying to do. I have ridden GP schoolmasters and they're not easy and I have a lot of respect for ANYONE who can ride ANY GP horse, but it's a different skill set to ride a trained horse vs train a horse.

3) I don't really care as much anymore about having a proven track record taking people to Grand Prix. I know how to ride all the movements and am confident in my ability to ride them correctly. I really just need some guidance vs someone to teach me how to do the movements.

4) Similar to the last point, I don't need to ride with an S judge because I have a pretty good eye for what is expected at each level at this point. Previously I really wanted someone who had seen a lot of GPs so they wouldn't put the level up on a pedestal and hold me back until they KNEW I'd score well. At that point, I needed acceptable scores. With TC, I want good scores, so I'm okay being held back a bit.

Like we've been working on leg yields
for a long time but STILL NOT GOOD
ENOUGH TO SHOW OKAY

In addition to those points in my last post, I also said a few other things that I didn't care about. I didn't care if my trainer was late, kind of mean, didn't want to ride my horse, or charged a lot.

I still don't care what a trainer costs if I think they're worth it. As much as I adored my lesson with Jeremy last year, I don't know if I will ride with him again. It was a good lesson, yes, and I learned a lot, but did I learn *twice* what my regular trainer could teach me? No.

I still don't care if a trainer doesn't want to ride my horse. I fully expect to ride with trainers with such a good eye that they really don't need to sit on him very often. I'm also pretty adept at describing what I am feeling if they can't see it.

Would love to ride with you again man, will settle for auditing!

But, here are some additional requirements that I didn't have last time.

5) I need a trainer who is detailed. I cannot stand trainers who teach in a way that I've dubbed "dressage porn" where it's just the trainer saying things like "go down the long side, yes, good job, now circle, excellent, more bend, really good! Now leg yield to the rail, so good, yeah, that's great." Like, sorry, if it makes me feel kinda dirty writing your lesson transcript out, I can't take a lesson from you.

6) At this point, I need someone who has trained under Mary Wanless. I want that first toolkit stuff super bad. Again, due to my own experience and TC's low level, I can definitely watch videos of us and know that I need more angle, more impulsion, more bend, more everything. But I want to become more adept at the rider -> horse toolkit, rather than the horse -> ideal horse toolkit. Since mine is quite well developed at this point.

7) I can't do the late, rude trainer anymore. I'll break it up.
7a) Instead of evening lessons once a week on a weekday while I'm in grad school with a super flexible schedule, I now have to give up part of a precious weekend day to take a lesson. If my trainer is going to be up to an hour and a half late (but will occasionally be on time and cut a lesson short if I'm late), I'm giving up a HUGE amount of time. And even if I could ride on a weekday, I still don't want to wait around for an hour for a lesson because I need to go to bed early to get up for work!

7b) I really can't handle a mean trainer anymore. It's really interesting! There's mean in that they push me hard, but then there's mean about my riding. I can't stand being told to *use my considerable experience* when I'm riding. Like, fuck off. I am doing my best, I'm not just sitting up there ignoring my past, acting like an idiot or wanting to redo my education from scratch. Just because I'm not riding the same way as I did when I had a ton of free time, was riding a ton of horses, was riding a smaller mover with a quieter mind, and was doing CrossFit 3-4x per week.... yeah. Give me a break.

7c) I can't handle a trainer who doesn't like TC. Rico was a really generic warmblood type. Lots of trainers got along with him. TC is not a warmblood, really. He's also not quite a baroque type. He has a busy mind like a baroque type (though this is calming down as he gets older, phew) but the athleticism and back-moving-ness of a warmblood. I feel like I need to be a lot more careful with TC. You can't pull on his face, you can't beat him with a whip, you can't fight with him. He's not the sort you can yank onto the bit, kick forward, and get in fights with about movements. So having a trainer who wants to work with horses and doesn't automatically assume that the horse is "being a jerk" or is "an asshole" or what not is very important. I'm also personally in need of a trainer who isn't afraid of him. They don't have to ride him, but they can't be scared for me either.

Not an asshole at all, he is the best horse in the world (except
Rico of course) 

So we'll see how the trainer hunt goes. I have up to four in mind. It kind of depends on how things change this year. They are all Gold medalists at least, three of them (I think) have track records of getting riders to the FEI levels, if not Grand Prix, two of them have ridden internationally themselves. Two of them have studied Mary Wanless extensively. Fingers crossed one of them works for us! I think this year I'm going to really prioritize getting a ton of lessons (once as I buy a trailer though, but that's another post). This year is really important to get him set up for the collection required at the next few levels. I'd love to take two lessons a month and press forward with this awesome horse!

Remote Workday Musings

Wednesday morning I had a meeting that I was "in charge of" and so didn't have much time to do anything significant with TC. So I put him on the long lines for the first time in a while (in the outdoor round pen which was open until it rained yesterday).

I always feel like long lining might be boring to him, but he's ALL about it, mostly because I usually use the clicker. He seemed very eager to do his work, but not to bring his back up and track up. We were going left and when we switched right, he was definitely a bit sticky on the outside hind leg. So his left butt cheek was definitely sore from the day before, when he spooked at a chair every time we went by it so he had to canter by it a lot, and probably in a more collected canter than he's used to.

This used to be par for the course for this horse. I think the first six months after he came home from rehab he was kind of NQR every other day. He just got sore. After I put him on the MuscleUp supplement, and after he got older I'm sure, he stopped getting sore. So luckily I didn't freak out about it. And he was totally sound and normal on Thursday morning.

The fog was so ominous, but it was sunny at the barn

On Wednesday evening, I had talked to my unofficial boss (who really should be my official boss, this school is so weird) who has been very encouraging about me working from home once a week. It REALLY saves me on commute time and how many miles I'm putting on my car. I get a bit annoyed when I have no meetings scheduled and I end up just sitting at my desk all day and talk to no one. I get even more annoyed on days like Wednesday where I was trying to work on my presentation and it seemed like my desk was the place to be for everyone and their mother. So working from home is really nice.

My official boss is less enthused about it. Part of me doesn't care all that much. But I do have to get it "approved" so I sent an email on Thursday morning and she got back to me with what I considered to be a tiny bit of attitude about it. Dude, do you know what it's like to drive 3 hours a day every day? It is not fun. It was still approved, but I was a little bit annoyed. So poor TC had to work harder than normal because of it. And that got me thinking.

I've been considering what my future with him will be lately. I'm thinking a lot about the future. I had my life get turned upside down when my plans to move across the country fell through. For a second I had NO IDEA what to do with my life and kind of freaked out. But I'm a planner and relish in the act of planning, so I'm feeling as good as I've ever felt about the future.

So things may be changing in my personal life, but I do want to see some changes happening in my life with TC. The last few years have been a period of catching up financially. Putting money into retirement accounts that I hadn't been able to, saving a hefty emergency fund and extra money for what I was going to use for moving costs (instead that's just more emergency fund at the moment). Every single financial decision I make is heavily weighed and I stick to a very strict budget.

After he was bad the other day, he didn't think it
was unwarranted 

This means that I rarely take lessons. And at first it was totally fine. TC was too young to be in that hard of work, he was then injured, and I've taken so many horses beyond where he's at that I don't *need* lessons on him. But I WANT to take lessons.

I took maybe five or six lessons in the last year and I think this year I want to get a bit more serious about my education with this horse. I feel bad for him on days like Thursday when he had to work hard and we had a few minor disagreements (you can't prop your butt up in a walk to canter transition, leg yields from the wall DO exist and you can't stick your head up in the air and slow down to do them, you can't just run away from my outside leg at the canter). I know he needs to work hard, but it's nice having someone confirm that this is the way he SHOULD be working hard.

That may sound really confusing since I've trained horses to the FEI levels myself where I was the one who was making all the decisions. But I don't want to take TC on the path that I know. Because I want TC to be better than any horse I've trained before. And that means having someone guide me through the process a bit more regularly. Maybe not once a week, since there are no trainers who come to my barn (that I'm willing to ride with) so that means hauling out, but maybe every other weekend. This probably won't start until at least February, I'm doing the Mary Wanless workshop in a week (!!!) so that ate all my would-be lesson budget for January.

Wandering around the ranch

My next problem is finding a trainer to ride with. My first instinct is to ride with my actual trainer. She's the best trainer in the area, she gets his type, she isn't scared of him (despite knowing his behavioral problems which IMO are rapidly disappearing), she is fair to him, he likes her barn, I am not totally useless turning the trailer around there, etc. Money-wise she's not outrageously expensive.

But there are some downsides, I've had trouble with my own confidence riding with her because she knew me on Rico and likes to compare current me to past me (and kind of ignores me when I'm like dude, I used to pretty much be brought to you by Crossfit and now I'm brought to you by sitting on my ass for 10 hours a day). I also struggle because she has trouble being on time, and hauling over there, taking a lesson, and hauling back is already a 3.5 hour journey, then add in having to wait around... and it really digs into my weekend.

I audited a trainer recently who is really nearby (like take 3.5 hours down to 2). She has her Gold (but has only competed at GP on one horse and hasn't taken anyone to GP) and she's super nice. But I can only describe her lessons as... dressage porn. She told the rider what to do, and then praised them for it. So like instructions were to go down the long side, do a circle, ride a leg yield. And then more positive reinforcement than I'm used to (yah, that's nice, good job, yes!, that's it, praise him). Sometimes there'd be something helpful like having the rider bend the horse more or do a transition again if it wasn't good. But I'm used to a constant stream of intense theory and instruction. And this just seemed like the kind of trainer I'd argue with over something like over-bending. I do not like over-bending.

There are others in the area. Obviously the trainer who actually got me my Gold is around, but she's a bit more crank and spank than TC needs (he needs 0 crank and spanks). There's two other trainers who are close-ish, one I haven't even heard anything about and one Kate has ridden with and no longer rides with (in favor of Tracey). Soooo I feel a bit stuck. In an area surrounded by Gold Medalists, you'd think I could find someone easily!

At least I know that my trainer's track record is good!

My whole life may move soon anyway, I have some job applications out in a few different places, so I don't really need to solve this problem any time soon. But I think just reworking my budget and getting two lessons scheduled in February (unless it pours rain, both TC and I hate rain) would be a good start!