Unwinding Ridden Work

As I mentioned yesterday, I bought a saddle and rode TC in it! Actually, I've ridden him in it twice now and I'm genuinely looking forward to riding him in it today. 

I was glad that on the first day, I was able to grab some video. And I was also grateful to be able to send those videos to Kate and get her opinion on them. It's really hard to see my own horse with fresh eyes and I am really struggling with looking at this situation objectively. It's been a mix of emotions where I feel really horrible that we got to this place, and really frustrated (both with me and with him a little), and because of that, I can't really break things down as easily just watching the video by myself.

I have no horse photos but I took a day off on
Tuesday to both go birding by the coast and to go
to TC's breeder's Celebration of Life

The few things I noticed were:

- We are both really defensive of each other, it's like I'm preparing for him to balk and he's preparing for me to stuff him forward. I look very hesitant in my riding, but in the same way you're hesitant when you're super frustrated but trying to remain calm. Like there's a hardness living inside of my hesitation. 

- He's not letting me in, I feel like I'm sitting outside of him and if I try to sit into him at all, he gives me a warning about balking. I described it as when I'm helping someone write code who doesn't have a basic understanding of the language, so I'm like, half asking them to write it and half literally spelling it out for them. And then I see what they've written and I'm like... I mean technically that will run but that's... just weird. 

Kate saw all of that as well, but also pointed out a mechanic he's fallen into with his hind end, where his right hind sweeps under his body but not in a carrying way, it stiffens straight and then his left hind kind of pole vaults over it. That was a really huge realization and I think will change things for us. But I've got to give it more thought and try to feel it a bit better before I write about it. 

His breeder was quite the character,
I will really miss her, I've had a few
losses recently and while this one
was not completely unexpected, it was
still a loss of a very influential person
in my (and TC's) life <3

There were good things too - for the most part, he had a pretty pleasant expression on his face! He looks sound and happy enough to do his work. And he hasn't been bolting or balking much. 

And while I've got some weird stuff going on in my pelvis, I still maintained quite a good mechanic! It's funny, I think the pelvis thing is the fact that I rehabbed my hip injury all this year. I feel great, I did physical therapy and now I work with a personal trainer who helped me come up with a very effective program that has allowed me to avoid surgery! But now my hips are quite a lot looser. Stronger yes, but much looser. And I think a lot of my riding mechanic depended on my hips being a little tight. So now there's this slightly odd twisty thing I'm doing with my hips in my posting mechanic. 

I see my trainer for a private session (I normally do groups with my gym buddies since it's more affordable and more fun that way!) soon, so I need to really take inventory of what is going on so that we can talk about it and get me a bit better stabilized for riding. But it's progress! Even if I'm a bit wonky right now, my hip hasn't hurt at all while riding and I'm really not as unfit as I thought I'd be.

It was a nice day to just wander along the coast
with friends and family, and then go celebrate her

On the second day, armed with some of Kate's exercises (who I am very thankful for, since I seem incapable of doing any critical thinking about the horse right now), I decided that I wanted to try to improve the connection. This is the purpose of me riding him - because I have more influence over it, so if I can't get him well connected, we may as well go back to long lining. 

Back in the day, this horse had the dreamiest connection, he was tough to get there, but once there it was like I could draw him into the work I wanted him to do. We lost that along the way, and I think I'd really like to get him back to that place. Especially since showing is not really a huge goal of mine (like obviously I will show him a little if he comes back since he loves it, but it's not the primary driver), so we can take things slow and we don't have to stick within the confines of a test. I do think that's what happened, slowly but surely he had to do a thing NOW and my trainers were in my ears making that very clear. I don't think that's bad, I just think that it caused a loss of trust. But now I get to do it my way!

Meanwhile Christmas exploded at my
workplace and I sat next to this festive
pillow the next morning for breakfast

The first half of the ride was me battling with the frustration of his warm up - he just takes longer these days and I'm trying to figure out what the right balance is between hustling him a little bit forward during it, and leaving him completely alone (which feels like reinforcing him being behind my leg). I do think it's probably better if I longe him through it, but I've been skipping that because I'm greedy and want to ride. 

Side bar- this reminds me of a client I had whose horse would take exactly twenty minutes to warm up, regardless of what you did. When I rode her, I'd get up in my half seat and just do trot sets, then she'd be ready to work. But my client would come to me each week with a new theory that if she just does X exercise (which took her twenty minutes to discover) it worked super well. Then she'd start with that exercise and wouldn't you know it, the horse wouldn't immediately warm up and the client would be frustrated. 

Then, the middle part of the ride was me fighting the urge to just put him on the damn bit. He was floating above and away from me and would give me his nose, tucked nicely like the little faker his friesian breeding encourages him to be, but I had zero access to his back or the base of his neck. I resorted to pulling on the face since that's a tried and true method (that doesn't work but it FEELS like it works. It's like using an AI assistant at work, feels like progress but at the end of the day, it just produces spaghetti code that sure, you've tested a lot, but still doesn't work - lots of work metaphors today). During this part, I was working on some shallow loops, and we were absolutely all over the place. 

And then finally I took a moment to use my brain (very hard right now) and decided to go back to something Tracey used to make me do - hold onto the tab on my saddle pad to give me an idea of how steady my hands are (or are not). I did it enough when TC was younger that it kind of puts us both in a better place. And I'm also so unbelievably out of riding shape and practice that the moment I did it, it made me realize how loose in the tack I had gotten over time, and with this new flexi-hip. 

We also had our year-end social and
they had this random candy bar

Slowly, over the course of a few trot sets, he started to really come onto the bit properly, not just faking it, but I could feel and see in his neck/back that he was much better connected. And I finally got that same feeling I'd had years and years ago, that I could just draw him through the exercises. We rode our shallow loops without them feeling so drunk, and I could feel him start to tune in like "oh this is interesting" for the first time at the very least since last winter, if not longer. And, when we went back to the barn, he had a little hypertrophy in his trapezius (both cervical, and I could convince myself thoracic too), which has only really happened on trail rides so far. 

I kind of couldn't believe it? Our second ride back and by the end of it, we got to a place where I'd be super happy to stay indefinitely? 

Anyway, we have a LONG way to go, this could have just been a fluke, we could still see the same pattern happen next summer where he begins to feel terrible again, I could just be making this up as I careen into the end of the year after a really stressful half... but I'm relishing in the fact that this is the first time I'm genuinely looking forward to riding my horse in quite a long time. 

Letting Him Warm Up

TC is up to 16 minutes of work now! Which is not no work, so that's pretty cool. I don't think he's been this fit in a while, since he got the summer basically off and last winter I didn't do too much with him. 

The way I have it structured is to do 1:30 minute trot sets with 1 minute breaks in between. Then every 3 trot sets, we change direction which I give him 2 minutes to do. This works out to 4 overarching directional work sets. So left, then right, then left, then right. A total of about an hour in the arena (if you include the 12-15 minute walk before and after all of those trot sets, which I sometimes do on the tracks). 

My next goal is to collapse those into 2 minute work sets, except instead of 3 sets, we'll do 2 sets. That will keep us at 16 minutes but be lengthening the amount of time that he's trotting. 

From a recent trail ride

The reason why I'm doing it this way, and this slowly, is that the problem I've had with him is that he gets really balky about transitions and frequently slams on the brakes while I'm riding him. So I started him with 30 seconds of trot and we've slowly worked up to working longer, with plenty of breaks in between. 

I figured that this would help him mentally understand that he will never have to work forEVER and that he will get breaks, just not when he demands them. I think we both fell into this pattern where he'd slam on the brakes and I'd keep hustling him along and I'd probably work him longer than I would have if he hadn't slammed on the brakes, basically showing him why he should slam on the brakes in the first place. So having this schedule, and having it go super slowly, has been really good for us. It's us working together against the rehab schedule, not against each other. 

It also means that we do more transitions! So I've been able to watch the way he does transitions and encourage him when he does them well. When we started this rehab, he was kind of hopping into trot, like hurling himself into it with his neck. This still sometimes happens, but it's not happening nearly as much as it used to. I've also started doing some transitions within the gaits and transitions from walk to trot and trot to walk, as well as a few here and there adding some steps of canter. This has helped him stay more engaged mentally too! 

He's been a nut to trail ride recently

And finally, it's been really good for me to see him warm up and get better as he works more. I definitely think I'll be longeing him before riding him when I do start riding him. He starts out just kind of slow and a little stiff, not lame but not energetically moving forward. The other day, I was trying to convince myself to not work him because he looked so bad. Like why am I tormenting this poor horse. 

But I've told myself to blindly stick to my rehab plan until next summer when I confirm that it hasn't worked. And so I kept asking him to do his trot sets. And you KNOW WHAT? He worked out of it and looked the best he's looked in a while by the end of his work. 

I think his muscle wasting and his balking slowly led me to baby him a little (a lot). And for good reason -I do not want to beat my horse through a dressage test while he looks like a rescue case. But I think it softened me a little too much. I've noticed this in my personal training sessions, where my trainer has figured out when to really push me (when I am just complaining) and when to pull back and either change what I am doing or have me do some prehab exercises before continuing (when I mention my hip injury). But he never has me stop working out and go home. So I'm channeling that for TC too! 

Keeps hitting his deer threshold and
then using his new cardiovascular
fitness to have feelings about it lol

I think my goal is to get him up to about 20 minutes of work and try to have the work sets be something like 5 minutes each. I do want that to take time. The nice thing about this system is that I can notice when he starts to offer to walk and wait until he's not offering too early in the trot set before I move him up.

But really, I'm just winging this. My primary goal is to have him in completely full work by the end of the winter/spring (maybe 30 minutes total work? ideally with 6-8 minute work sets) so that we are going into the tougher summer days with him super fit and happy to work. Who knows if we'll actually make it there! I'll keep hoping and keep moving toward it though.

New Shoes & First Rides

TC saw his farrier yesterday and got his new fancy 3D printed pads on! His feet definitely look better and I'm glad that we made this change. 

The pads he was in previously were just flat pads. They were good enough to protect his soles from the hard ground, but outside of that didn't do much for him. These new pads are frog support pads, which should allow him to grow a bit more heel, since we've done as much as we can with the trim to correct his angles. They also have holes, both in the frog area where my farrier put composite to hold the pads on, and in the toe/sole area to allow for better drying. 

Aren't they cool??

The drying is important because one theory my farrier has is that in the summer when it's super dry and hard, he plays in his water and his feet get soaked and soft, and then he pounds on them, which causes them to somewhat disintegrate. So we addressed both of these issues with these new pads!

My farrier is the tiniest bit worried about leaving his heels a little more curved under than normal. Her belief is that she'd rather leave a short but strong heel versus a longer heel that is at risk of being underrun. However, she will see him again in 4 weeks and I am to let her know if he suddenly says no thank you to his new trim/shoes. 

Updated feet pics

Definitely better than before

I took him out afterwards (since he's never had issues after the farrier comes) and actually decided to ride him. I'd been really on the fence about riding, wanting him to gain more strength first and even considering getting him back to full work before trying. But on Sunday I decided that I wanted to get a baseline, even if it meant feeling discouraged because not much had changed. 

I'd taken him out just in the halter because I was convinced he'd say no to doing very much, so I was prepared to longe him. Instead, he was pretty happy to work! I think he'd rather be ridden than longed, so on Tuesday after he got shod, I decided to fully tack him up with the bridle and everything. 

He's so weird

The first really good sign was that he wanted to walk down the road! I haven't wanted to after the initial vet visit because of the mechanical laminitis he'd shown and he honestly hadn't been asking. I kept him on the softer ground and then when we turned onto the paved part of the road, I asked him to turn around. He was bummed, but I really want to slowly introduce that back just in case the road walking was the cause of some of his foot issues. Juggling all these changes has been a challenge, but I really want to be a good experimenter here. 

We're doing 6 x 30 second trot sets each direction for a total of 6 minutes of trot. In between, we are walking for 30 seconds. It's enough to get him breathing a little hard and a little sweaty, but he's able to hold his posture the entire time which is the most important part. I think I'm seeing good changes in his posture too! But I could be making that up. 

Undersaddle, I can tell it's a little harder for him, but he was still very willing to do the work! Like, I haven't felt him willingly trot from walk in a while. He said yes every time I asked him to trot and had really quite good quality transitions both up AND down. In the past, he'd balk into the upward transition (sometimes shifting weight sideways to get out of it) and he'd slam on the brakes at any hint of a downward transition. 

And again, in the trot, I couldn't feel a balk. I could feel a little weakness or a little hesitation to continue, but it felt more strength related or cardio related (and him knowing our 30 second routine + my alarm dings). And if I asked him to keep going, he never slammed on the brakes. 

I tried keeping him clean after hosing
him down and I failed

It was so fun too, playing with the connection and the transitions. I'm riding in the TCS, which gives me limited stability, so my mantra is to just keep it slow, active, and straight in the neck. If I tell myself to keep it slow, I can really focus on maintaining the tempo rather than rushing him like we had gotten to before. Active mostly meaning that I don't have to bother him about continuing to move forward. And straight in the neck because he gets a little folded at the base of his neck careening it inward. 

He's a little better in the contact tracking right than left, and a little straighter left than right. I think my goal through this rehab is to really address those things. We certainly have the time. 

The contact especially is something we just haven't worked on in a super long time. He kind of floats above my hand tracking left and if I ask him to really take my hand, he wants to offer me other things instead, like bending too much. To the right, he gets a little passage-y (in a bad way) if I ask him for anything beyond what he's offering. 

Then in walk, the contact is really funny, it seems to shut him way down, where if he's on a loose rein, we get a pretty stellar walk, but on the contact he slows his tempo down quite a lot. He's kind of always been like that, but I want to work on it given the amount of walk we're going to be doing. Hopefully by the end of winter he'll be much more confident in the contact at the walk. I think it's mostly a strength issue, he has a humongous walk and not a lot of topline right now. 

I ran out of TC photos so here are some pictures I
took at a swamp I went to recently

By the end of our trot sets, he was actually really forward and sensitive in trot! Which I think is another good piece of the puzzle for me. In the past, he'd sometimes get a little explosive at the end of rides, like he'd start out balking and then at some point, he would just explode and then be completely tight and anxious for the rest of the ride. Probably because something was hurting and he was finally like OKAY FINE I WILL DO IT and then was distraught. 

This was one of the first times in a while where I felt like I had him forward because he was really ON vs him being forward due to the aftermath of an explosion. So I think now that I've addressed a lot of his pain (still planning on doing bodywork and injections, but clearly the feet were a big source of discomfort), a big piece of the puzzle will be to get him fitter than I had him in the past. It clearly takes some time for him to warm up and become a little more sensitized to the aids. By the time I had him in a place where I thought we could really do something yesterday, we were done with the ride. Which is totally fine for where we are right now. And probably shows him that when he becomes more forward, we end our ride. 

I saw three new birds there though!

So lots of things to consider as we continue on this rehab attempt! I'm feeling hopeful, but I'm also fully acknowledging that this is right around the time of year where things start to go better for us. I'm going to maintain that we will not know whether this horse is truly back to his old self until I'm able to ride him through next summer without balking. Fingers crossed though!!

Making Progress!

TC is now up to 6 minutes of trot total per day, we do 6 x 30 second trot sets in each direction. I've added in some trot poles since he seems to be interested in that and WOW I haven't seen him trot like that in years. I really do think he's feeling better with his shoes set back and the modified trim. He's not entirely excited to go forward at all times, but he's also very much out of shape and rehab is boring. I don't always love the gym but as I get stronger I feel better about it. 

He's also completely stopped lifting his legs and asking for scratches during grooming, which is wild to me. Such a small change can really make a huge difference I guess. And he's MUCH less nippy when we do my basic bodywork stuff. He went through a phase where any time I'd work on anything, he'd really go after me with his teeth. But now he seems to just enjoy it, and you can feel it in the muscles of his back and hindquarters too - they feel much more maleable even 3 weeks after his shoes got set back. There's still more to do but he feels great. 

He was helping with fencing the
other day

Unfortunately since he feels good, he is pretty bored. And now he isn't allowed to have his salt! I'd removed it about 24 hours before his chemistry panel, so it was unsurprising that the only thing that didn't come back normal was his sodium + chloride. We think that he's just really messed with his mineral balance just downing salt and water all day long, so I'm anticipating that there will be some time where he has to adjust. Right now he's taken to eating a wooden post... I'm hoping he's just bored/missing his salt, but if he continues to chew on the post, I'll chat with my vet again since that's not normal for him. 

Add to his lack of salty entertainment, he hates his boring rehab plan since so much of it is walking in the arena. I'm still restricting him from walking down the road, since I want to give him time to recover from the mechanical laminitis. He really hasn't been asking to go down the road, but I'm sure once we get in the arena each day and do our 15 minutes of walking on the longe line before his trot sets, he'd rather be anywhere else. 

I made him work in the misty rain and he hated it

Then we do our trot sets and that's where he seems the most happy. He gave me very happy ears on Monday after his first trot set where he pressed his ears so forward that they were almost facing each other. I'm trying to challenge him with some forward and back and some cavalletti work and I think he likes that a lot. 

But then it's back to walk for the last 15 minutes of the arena work, and sometimes afterwards we walk up in the hills. Anything to get him burning calories and strengthening his body. Soon, we'll be doing more trot work and eventually cantering, which will allow me to shorten his warm up and cool down a bit. And we'll also start trail riding undersaddle hopefully this fall. So it's going to get more interesting!! But it's hard to explain that to him. 

My coworkers all think it's hilarious that I tested my fat horse for horse diabetes and now he's on a fitness plan that he hates. We were at the gym yesterday with our personal trainer and it came up because I found out that he and I use the same interval training app! Now TC knows how I feel at the gym when he pulls out the Tabata timer for core work at the end. 

He needs to be involved in everything

Next week, he gets his new pads and then I'm going to schedule the next round of things I want to torment him with. On the docket are:

1. Nutritionist - even though he doesn't have EMS, I want to make sure that he's on the right track to lose weight with as much roughage as I can get into him. I'm a little worried about ulcers when he's consuming this little hay. I also want to talk to her about the salt obsession and make sure that his minerals are perfectly balanced. 

2. Bodyworker - I think I'm going to start having a local bodyworker come out every month (maybe more frequently to start) to help unwind his back. Although he's actually doing a good job of this himself! I want to probably start this in mid October to give him a week or two on his new shoes/pads. 

3. Joint Injections - I'm debating delaying these a little bit, maybe early November or even waiting until spring. I feel like I'll get more bang for my buck in the spring since that's when he's historically started having problems BUT I also feel like I should do what I can now to get him comfortable so that I can use the winter to put muscle on him. So far he isn't showing any issues being forward on the longe line (outside of what I can categorize as boredom, which is just at the walk), so I might wait until I'm ready to ride him. We'll see, I at least want to get some info from the vet office about the injections since I've decided to do them at a vet office vs at the ranch with my local vet. 

Gotta check everything

Fingers crossed the new shoes + pads next week go well! 

Maybe He's Just Salty

On Friday of last week, my vet was back out for Rico and Riot to do some bloodwork and I had her pull more blood for TC. Why? Because the day before, she had given me the news that TC's metabolic panel came back totally normal. 

I was kind of shocked by that! I had done a ton of research on IR because I was so confident he was about to be diagnosed with EMS. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense - he had the muscle wasting, the difficulty keeping weight off, and he was just downing salt and water so much that he pees ALL THE TIME. 

My vet was also surprised and so I asked her if there was any other explanation for him being such a salt fiend. She offered to do a full chemistry panel to test his electrolytes and make sure that his kidneys were functioning normally. Like maybe he just loves salt. 

He's a salty boy

Outside of that though, things are going well! I found an interval app that I like, so I set his rehab schedule up. I think every 3-4 sessions, we'll add some time, since he's not lame, he's just out of shape. All of this is on the longe line just in his rope halter. 

Right now we are doing this schedule:

- Figure 8 bars (to loosen up his shoulders and pelvis)

- 15 minutes of walk

- 8x 30 seconds of trot with 30 second walk breaks in between

- 15 minutes of walk

- Either hill work or reining back up the driveway (which is a slight hill)

We had our second and third days doing this schedule this weekend and he was getting in the groove pretty well. He seems happy to be working again and I've noticed some really great improvement since the last time I had him in any sort of work. 

How is he not EMS, like he's lost a little weight
recently but he still has zero topline

He's moving much better now than he did earlier this year, which again does tend to happen starting in the fall, so it might not be related to the changes I've made at all. But I'm glad to see that he seems comfortable in his feet, on my footing, and in a bit of work! 

His back also looks better, he had gotten kind of tight moving in the back, less swingy than before. So seeing his back move and him actually lift the tiniest bit through his withers is pretty promising too. He's so unfit that I'm hoping this just gets better and better. 

As far as exercise goes, my main goal is to a) get him fit and strong so that I can get back on him and b) get him committed to being forward at all three gaits. Luckily he never had too many problems balking on the longe line, so he's been really good! And I think the more I can see him being forward and the more he gets praised for staying forward on the line, the better. I'm in no rush to get back on, I want to be afraid he's going to launch me by the time I get back on so that we can start fresh with him being forward and my fascia not shutting him down. 

I get to weight tape him every week
because he's a chonky boy

Hopefully we get an (easy) answer with his bloodwork coming up. Outside of that, I got my hay sampling stick, so I'm going to grab samples from the bales we have at the barn as well as the bales at the feed shop (they don't test their hay but said that we could!) and send it off for testing. Once the testing comes back, I'll schedule an appointment with the nutritionist. I'm also going to have her help me with Rico's diet since he's lost a little weight recently. Although when my vet was out on Friday, she pulled blood on him and gave us permission to give him as much hay as he'll eat and then to give him as much Senior as it takes to get him gaining weight. 

And because he doesn't have IR, he can get his joint injections!! I think I want to schedule those for sometime in October. He sees my shoer again on October 7th so I want to give him maybe a week or two with his new shoes before I get him in for injections just to understand his baseline without the injections. But we'll see what the vet's schedule is. 

Then hopefully it's smooth sailing in rehab all winter and I have my horse back next year! I went to the California Dressage Society championship show to watch the Grand Prix Freestyles a couple of weeks ago and it was super fun and inspiring. I really hope that all of this works for TC. I think he'd love to be going to a show next year. 

The Return of Counter Canter

I'm really pleased with how TC is looking and feeling these days. He's finally getting to a place where I can really ride him in the more collected paces and have it feel somewhat easy for him. I think this is due to how much spinal integrity he's starting to maintain on his own. He's really learning to hold himself more together instead of relying on finding the outside edges of my aids and ping ponging off of those. 

Because of this, we've started to scratch the surface of moving back toward Second level! In our last lesson, we found a hole in the spinal integrity as he headed into canter, so I figured that I'd challenge him with some counter canter. 

For some reason I only clipped from left lead canter,
it was due to a time constraint, his right lead is better

It was really interesting. I went right first, so his harder lead but his easier direction, and it felt really weak. Like I could not ride it without feeling like I had to chase him a bit. That's fine, but nowhere near where I want it to be. 

The other direction though, well, I've never ridden a better counter canter. It felt unbelievably rideable, super uphill, and just downright easy for him! So that was fascinating. His left lead has always been the weaker one, but this is definitely a little more than usual. But I figure I'll give him a month or two of schooling some counter canter a couple days a week before I start using it as any sort of a diagnostic tool. He could also just be rather uncoordinated. 

I love trail rides on this horse

Beyond that, we also looked at some lengthened and shortened trot. TC has always had a lot of "pushing" power, but most of that power was actually just pulling power with his hind legs out behind him. We've been working hard on the carrying power, engaging his hind legs and lightening the forehand. But I also do need to access the *actual* pushing power rather than him always defaulting to pulling. 

I figure the best way to do this is to put him in his place of carrying, then ask him for a bigger gait, then put him back in his carrying place. It's a lot easier to go back to carrying if you don't completely change from rear wheel drive to front wheel drive. 

This was *very* hard for... me. I want to feel a big surge heading into a lengthening and that surge is only available by him pulling right now. So it was good for me to have to maintain a semblance of carrying in the lengthened trot. 

Best gray horse

But then that lead to some hovering on his part. Another thing that my body automatically rewards because it feels like passage. A hovering trot does not a passage make. A passage has both carrying and pushing power. The hovering is created by him just pulling himself with his neck and front feet and bouncing the hind legs along to create what feels like more suspension but what is actually a large heap of garbage. But like most people, it feels like passage so therefore I get a stupid grin on my face like wheee he's so bouncy and fancy. 

I've been there before though, so I've been working to let him know thank you, but I will not be requiring childlike joy from a hovering trot. I will ask you for more suspension later when you have the strength to do it properly. He's fine with that, just wanted to offer a shitty passage-like trot if I would like to have it. 

We have five baby cows by the way!
More in another post hopefully

All in all, it feels REALLY good to not have the harder work lead to him completely dropping through his thoracic sling and looking terrible again. His body is looking pretty good, not the way I want it to, but we're also struggling with how much food they're getting in pasture, so I think he was being a little underfed. He's getting more calories now so hopefully that helps us out in the topline department. 

He still looks way better than he did before, but now I've gotten greedy. My main goal though is for him to continue looking better. I don't mind if it takes a little while, but if he starts actually LOSING topline, that's when I need to stop and reevaluate. We aren't there yet, but I think this level of work and having enough to maintain weight but maybe not put on muscle (maybe? it's so hard to know when they're on pasture) can explain why he might be plateauing the tiniest bit. 

Passage?!?

So TC is up to about 20 minutes of trot on his weird little fitness schedule. It's been nice actually, to have a set amount of time to walk, trot, and canter each day. Really helps me organize my rides. 

I've been taking it relatively easy this winter. I was unhappy with how he was going over the summer and have been using the winter to take the pressure off and focus on the basics, try to find the horse I had when he was at First level. It's amazing how responsive he is when he's not under as much pressure. The dressage gets more playful and he seems more into it, his tempo has slowed down and he's developed a lot more loft to his trot. So I think a training change is coming in 2021, more on that later as it develops. 

Trot looking much better

We see Tracey next week again, and I know that she is wanting me to "slow down" TC's trot. I decided I didn't want another lesson being told to slow down, and with TC being more responsive and forward, I figured now was the time to start bringing back the half steps and the creeping gaits. 

I hadn't sat the trot in a while though, but we've done a TON of work on responsiveness to my seat lately, so when I sat down, I immediately felt new access to him. 

We played with the trot a bit, bringing him back to the creeping trot and sending him forward out of it, over and over again. Then I asked for half steps and he gave them to me surprisingly willingly! We did that in both directions and he got told how great he was. 

Such a smart pony

One thing I noticed was him getting a little stuck in the half steps and wanting to walk rather than push out, so I started to emphasize the push out. 

And that's when TC went "LIKE THIS" and gave me a passage for the first time. 

I looked at it in the mirror and made some tweaks to the way I was sitting and my aids to shape the response, as his first passage was a little tight and hollow. I still remember going by the mirror, half halting and touching him with the whip and he suddenly sat down in it and I could just SEE him in the FEI ring. 

I can work with this, yep

I think this winter has been big in the "listen to your horse" department. I loved so much about my training situation this year but the one thing I couldn't shake was that TC just didn't feel softly responsive. He seemed to enjoy what we were doing because he likes learning new things and is a cheerful guy, but there was more... force... in our training than I felt comfortable with. But there was just so much belief in us, in a horse I sometimes struggle to believe in, so I stuck with it. 

Then this fall when things kind of fell apart with the smoke, I revamped how I was riding him, making it much softer and aiming for riding more through my seat than I had been. Him being off the bit wasn't a problem, him being on the forehand wasn't a problem, I just focused on praising the right response and just ignoring the wrong one rather than getting on his case about it. 

He tries so hard

And his response made me decide that enjoying every ride was more important than our goals. I haven't written much about it because I don't necessarily think that my trainer is wrong, I just think that I want to go down a slightly different, but hopefully fairly parallel, pathway.

Up until this ride, I've felt like I've thrown dressage out the window and am just being silly about riding him the way I've been riding him. But now, I feel way better about everything. I just need to find a trainer to help me down this pathway and give us the same kind of confidence with a different methodology. 

By no means perfect but I don't hate it

We are obviously taking this work slowly and until we can start trail riding and climbing those hills, I think it's going to be a bit weak. I don't want to push him in it and create more of a weakness, and I certainly don't want to ruin his actual future passage. But again, just the fact that I have this much access is pretty cool! We'll see how things develop this spring with being back in full work, access to more hill work, and hopefully with a training situation that works for us! 

Hopefully It's Me, Part 1

I was debating whether to go to my lesson on Friday because of how TC was going. But I ended up doing it anyway so that I could get non-crazy eyes on the situation.

Tanya is a very no-bullshit person and listened to me, looked at his condition, and told me not to throw too much money at him because she essentially said Megan, he's a third level horse, not a Grand Prix horse, and he's an off breed, not a warmblood. Initially I was a bit concerned, but I made the decision earlier this year to commit to one trainer and she's it and all her horses look fabulous and score well and her riders ride beautifully. So I sucked it up and gave TC a pet and told him that this would be the one ride before the chirovet came out that he'd have to work his ass off.

Making sure the camera is getting his good side

And sure enough, TC and Tanya worked together through me and by the end, TC felt absolutely fabulous. It was as if TC was like "yeah she's being really ineffective and I'm trying to tell her to get her shit together but she's just a mess right now" and Tanya came in like "I can see that, let me see what I can do to get her going a little better for you" because a quarter of the way through the lesson, TC stood up straight, came way up through his back, and was having an absolute blast carting me around the arena while trying to pounce on bird shadows. Meanwhile I'm like "but do you think he's lame" and she and TC probably laughed together about that.

Before I go further, I will tell you all that I'm keeping my chirovet appointment and my regular vet appointment, I'm also definitely still revamping his nutrition (Tanya told me about a specific muscle builder - body builder? Haven't looked it up yet) and for SURE I need to figure out the saddle. Tanya told me that my thigh was too long for my saddle and it isn't doing me any favors. So I'm still listening to my gut, but the results of this lesson showed me that at least 50% of what is going on is me. That's awesome. I honestly hope I'm 100% of the problem, that's the cheapest solution.

Looking like a fancy pony

We covered a lot of ground, but here were the highlights:

Walk Work

Wow, turns out that not putting my leg on in the walk is NOT a solution to TC's jigging when I put my leg on. She thinks it's two issues: one is that he just simply isn't in front of my leg in general, two is that he will not step laterally off my leg. Basically his response to any leg in walk is just to jig, prompting me to take my leg off. By the end of two walk sessions, I had him more connected in walk than I'd ever felt!

Quality of Trot

This led to Tanya telling me to legitimately get a bucking strap to hold myself in the saddle if I needed to, but under NO CIRCUMSTANCES was I to slow the trot down or make it ANY easier for me to ride. Great. But let me tell you, this horse can fucking trot.

So, the trot work has been tough recently for us, it's where I see the most issues. What it feels like to me is that he's plenty forward and pumping him up through his back means that he just runs on the forehand, leading to him dropping his wither and curling in the contact. Tanya had me not put him as low in the poll, she said that was causing the wither drop (vs I was hoping he'd stretch into contact and then I could pick him up). Instead, she wanted him to step into the contact, however ugly it looked, and then we'd pump him way up from there. Contact first, then what I initially thought was energy but then realized was impulsion. He has the energy, but it's not directed anywhere, so he drops the wither. 

Such cute photos the SO took on Saturday

Tanya compared his topline to a long skinny water bottle, she said that if I kick him forward in a level balance, the front of the water bottle will fill with water and then drop down. If I first pick him up into an uphill balance, the water stays in the back of the bottle, weighting the hind end, and then I can add power without losing him onto the forehand. It worked. Really well. So well that on Saturday, I was very sore.

Trot Lateral Work

He needs to be way more supple laterally, like I mentioned before. His lateral work is high quality, with Tanya saying "well that's an 8 for sure" to his shoulder-in and half pass. The half pass right is absolutely perfect but the half pass left gets a bit underpowered at times and he falls through his left shoulder, so he loses the angle. To fix that, she had me open my outside rein to help show him that there was room for him to stay up and out to the outside rein and reminded me that half pass involves a lot of inside leg. My solution in the past had been to basically over bend him to the left and she reminded me to keep his ears focused on where I was aiming the half pass.

The shoulder-in was picture perfect after a couple of schoolings. Around this time in the lesson, I decided that I needed to only go to shows that Tanya was going to, because I genuinely think that she can add 10 percentage points to my score. When I schooled the tests by myself, I felt like they were solidly in the 60-65% range. With her magic, it's definitely over 70%.

Love this horse!

I wrote this whole post out with all the canter work too and it's shockingly long, so tomorrow I'll talk about the canter work and what I took from the lesson overall!

Put a Piaffe on That Horse

I don't normally take two lessons in a row, but this time, I felt like I needed all the help I could get! It was a really good idea because we got to build even more on the concepts we went over on Thursday and introduced some new things too. I was worried that we might have to take the same lesson twice, but that didn't happen at all! 10/10 will do two lessons in a row again.

We began warming up and TC was on it. Even though he had a day off on Friday while I worked, he felt like we'd been working on those concepts for weeks. I started out in my own warm up with some renvers and haunches-in, working on getting him to flex right and shift his weight onto his left shoulder. TC responded well and I let him hang out for a while, waiting for our lesson to begin.

Tanya had some nice things to say about our previous lesson, she was impressed how "tall" we got him, which basically means that we got him narrower so he appeared less like a chunky monkey (I swear you can feel his ribs, they're right there) and more like a toned dressage horse. I told her we hadn't worked on anything the day before, but that he was feeling really good that day.

Some fancy trot work!

We started in trot with some warm up lateral work, riding some shoulder-in, renvers, and steep leg yields. TC isn't the best at steep leg yields, so I know what we'll be doing in warm up from now on. His shoulder-in and renvers were on point though, the horse learns SO FAST and I guess I'm up there learning too. He started out way more between my aids than he did on Thursday and it was so much fun.

We then headed into canter and did some work on his collected canter. Tanya had an interesting observation that TC gets a lot of air time in the canter, but mostly in his hind legs. She wanted him to commit to the collection more than he'd like to and had me really put my mechanic on it to make it happen. My inner thighs were quite sore that night!

But TC is an actual genius, so he sat right down and was such a good boy about working that hard. We switched directions with a flying change after riding some 10 meter canter circles. Tanya had me do it on the short diagonal and wanted me to wait until B, but I didn't because TC offered and I went with it. It was a great flying change but "that's nowhere near B, Megan" and thus began a discussion of where TC is in his flying change training.

Tanya thinks TC is way more confirmed than I do, but she says she sees it in him, he's confident and knows exactly what I'm asking for and will do it. Now is the time (even though we're literally 3.5 months into flying change training!) to begin having him wait for my aid.

Counter canter exercise to the left

With that, we went right into our next exercise. Tanya had me track large and do trot to canter transitions between counter canter and true canter. Get TC really in tune with canter, trot, switch flexion/shift weight, counter canter, trot, switch flexion/shift weight, canter, and so on. Then when I was in counter canter, set him up and do a change the same way I've been switching flexion/shifting weight. TC was quite good at this from right to left. He gave a very quiet flying change that was on my aids. There was a tiny bit of falling left as he changed, so Tanya suggested we play with that over time, but generally for the first time in this exercise, very good.

The other way, tracking right (and therefore the left to right change), was TOUGH. TC did not want to pick up the counter canter, then when we actually tried the change, he jumped sideways out of the arena, tripping and landing with the arena fence in between his legs. That taught him though, and the next one we did was FABULOUS. Tanya was so excited! So was I.

More fancy trot work

It was right then in the lesson that I realized how much fun TC was having. He was grinning ear to ear. Even Tanya started to mention how much he seemed to be enjoying his work. I told her that ever since starting the changes, the horse has been so confident and has been having so much fun in his work! He is really coming into his own as a dressage horse.

Sure enough, she had me do some walk trot transitions for a bit and he got more and more amped with every right answer and every neck pet and good boy I gave him. He puffed himself up more and more as we did some shoulder-in to medium trot work. Tanya told me that the medium was actually quite good, even though I've thought it wasn't very good.

By the end of our ride (which ended with two amazing half passes that my soloshot decided to cut off our legs during), TC was bombing around like an FEI horse, still with his big stupid grin and his perked little ears. Tanya said literally those words "there's your FEI horse" while we were going. I was smiling a lot as well.

Counter canter exercise to the right, he was very

confused by this so you can see him struggling and

then he eats shit at 2:30, keep watching to see his

best LR change ever!

At the end of the lesson, we stopped to chat. Tanya told me about a horse she knew who was like TC, really not super fancy from the get go and definitely the wrong breeding, but who somehow (and no one knows how) just thrived in the dressage. The horse went to Kentucky at the I1 last year. Tanya told me to get a piaffe on my horse ASAP and keep perfecting all of this work for Third level and beyond.

I was in complete shock. And then I saw the videos and like... is this really my horse? There's still so much to improve, but he literally gave me a feeling I've never had before. I've taken two horses to Grand Prix and schooled several others at that level. Never felt this in a horse before. It was more than just fancy movement or collection or connection. There was something about the harmony and how much fun we were both having that made it truly spectacular.

I think this might be my next Grand Prix horse, guys. And I think he's going to want to show in front of some real crowds one day. I think it's safe to say that we've re-positioned our aim into the stars.

Ironing It All Out

We interrupt this Mary Wanless week of posts to talk about TC because he's a GODDAMN GENIUS of a horse and we had a great lesson last night. Also, my last Mary post is about the canter mechanic and I need to compile a TON of videos, so that's my Sunday project this weekend. Keep an eye on my instagram to get a sneak peek, I'm sure I'll be sharing there first.

Thursday afternoon, I headed back over to ride with Tanya! Her homework last time was basically to address the issue with TC's accelerator and also to work on his suppleness. We came out guns-a-blazing and she had to tell me to freaking half halt before I bombed around in medium trot the entire ride. Excellent.

I was a little concerned about my SI recovery, so I warned her that I felt wobbly and that I might need some help with that. But the entire ride, it didn't bother me at all, I was occasionally unsteady, but that's what bearing down is for. So I'm super pleased, I will hopefully have another PT appointment next week so we'll keep working on it all.

Being so cute after the lesson

We started out talking about some of the stuff that Mary had said. The biggest thing Tanya took away was tucking her boards into her horse's shoulders. If you're unfamiliar with Mary's boards, here's how she describes them: a sophisticated way of working with asymmetries. Instead of dividing the body into halves, we divide it into thirds, taking lines which follow the line of braces but which continue right down to the bottom of the torso. It is as if a board joined the rider's front to her back along each of these lines. Keeping her spine vertical is very much easier when those boards are firm.

Okay so you take your boards, and you ask yourself, if I can extend those forward, would they be tucked in behind the horse's shoulder blade, or are you losing a board outward? I definitely lose my right board outward away from TC's right shoulder.

And thus began an entire lesson on straightness!

Happy pony

TC has always wanted to duck out his right shoulder, which is where I leave a door open anyway, so he's honestly well within his right to do that. When that happens, his haunches fling themselves left and his nose gets pulled left too (erm, to clarify, I pull his nose left). Tanya pointed out that when I go to straighten him, he often just flings his entire body left, so it discourages me from riding him straight because then I can't keep him on the rail. She put us in renvers to the left and had me make sure that he kept his haunches on the rail while I pushed his withers into the left rein.

We also played a bit with riding shoulder-in in each direction. To the left, I needed to essentially ride more renvers to get him to stay stepping into the left rein and to actually bring his withers to the left (vs his favorite, a neck-in). To the right, she wanted him to flex more right. He's very happy to bend his neck and body right, but he stays a bit stuck in his poll and doesn't really come through. That's caused by him, again, not stepping into the left rein. I sense a theme.

Hi, do not want to connect to left rein, no thanx

In canter, Tanya was happy to see him actually really forward. She had me get on his case about the connection, getting him more INTO the bridle to the right. She wanted him to stand more upright, which she had me address by getting a better feeling from my right leg to my left rein and insisting that he not only bend right, but he shift his weight left. When he did this, he felt so much BIGGER and way more upright, almost narrower. Like everything squished together and got taller. Tanya said it looked like he dropped some weight (he isn't fat, but he is big boned, literally, you can feel his ribs, his knee joint is the size of my head).

To the left, we rode a diamond, which one of the other long term Mary participants had Tanya do on her horse at the workshop. It was really fascinating, and very hard for both of us. I essentially rode him in renvers again, pushing his withers to my left hand and not backing off the contact. Tanya was on my case about that, she said that her guess would be that he's a bit too light. Understatement of the century, Tanya.

Once again, his canter TRANSFORMED. I've never felt him like this. It was amazing, I had him completely underneath me and he gave me so much access.

At the end of our canter work, Tanya wanted to see the changes! With this new, more upright TC, he was ON IT and showed her the two best changes (one in each direction) that he's legit ever done in his life. She seemed excited about them. I told her he was super easy to put them on but that he was still green, of course. She said there was a lot to like - they're clean, they're uphill, they're on my aid, and he doesn't dick around in them. She wants me to hone in on being able to keep him straighter so I can just shift his weight and change (right now it's a lot more of a change-the-bend, so they jump a bit sideways, not too much, but I certainly am not on the exact same line), as that is going to be key for tempi changes. But that for where he's at in his training, she's very happy! YAY!

I need to take more pictures of this animal so I don't constantly
reuse them for this blog. 

At the end of the lesson, we talked a little about TC as a whole. TC scored very well at Training and First but we chatted about how he's just really flow-y and I'm not in his way and the high scores came from what a nice picture we gave. He was a VERY good First level horse and I know how to ride a good First level test. But a good First level horse doesn't make a good Second level+ horse. And that's what we're after now. I did point blank ask Tanya if she thought he could do the upper levels, she said yes, that she wouldn't give up now. I had an inkling he could do the upper levels, but it's nice to hear from my trainer that I shouldn't sell him as a lower level horse and get something more talented.

But TC needs to give me more access now and he's a little bit unsure of that, especially in canter, it's a lot of effort on his part. In addition, when he gets to the place he needs to be, he feels like he's about to launch me. I've spoken about this before, so it's just more of that, I need to ride him in a way that's on the edge of my comfort zone. That's excellent! But it's hard.

Overall, it was an absolutely fabulous lesson. I love how he's feeling these days with Tanya's training plan. And it was great to see how much access my new wobbly SI joint gave me. I need to work harder in my riding than I have in the past, but I can actually do everything Tanya is asking now! Hopefully tomorrow we continue to build on these concepts, I'm so glad I signed up for two lessons this month.

Wordless... Thursday: Trot Work

This week, the blog has been eluding me. I have had some time to write, but haven't had much to say. I suppose that's just what happens sometimes, I'm not going to force it. For today, I figure I'll just show you some screenshots of the video I got from my lesson. It's all trot pictures just because I haven't gotten that far in my obsessive watching of the video. His canter does look really good though, I'm super pleased with how he's coming along.

Warm up trot, a bit btv and on the forehand but look at how
much his back is coming up

Again his warm up is just a titch btv right now, but I love how
he's learning to reach with his front legs rather than stamp them

So much butt tucking, good boy, TC

Bit further in the lesson, his right hind loves to be under his body

It was so hot there, guys

Tracking left is hard for both of us

Left hind finds it harder to stay under but we're working on it

Can we just focus on that neck, even though he's a titch low in
the poll for now?