Canter Bootcamp

Yesterday I was so so so done with the horse drama by the time I got to my first lesson this morning. The horse did NOT get the memo and was kind of a jerk to his rider. I ended up getting on him and having one of those magical trainer moments where simply my ass gracing his back made him realize that he was in trouble and he immediately complied with everything I asked of him. Of course this made my poor rider feel even worse! That was not my intention, obviously, I just gave off the don't fuck with me vibe that morning.

That vibe carried through to my ride last night on Rico during the first in the series of canter bootcamp rides that he'll be getting for the next six weeks before PSG.

I have to time my rides carefully because it's been quite hot, and last night when I rode, the balance between too hot to ride and too dark to ride wasn't quite right. I ended up getting on him at 8:15 so I only had 35 minutes to ride him (after his 15 minute walk which is mandatory because he's old and has many injuries). I was in a bit of a rush and he was being a bit lazy so in an act of utmost intelligence, I thought it'd be a good idea to try the counter change of hand at the canter after schooling a bunch of pirouette canter. Looking back, why did I do that?? He's not going PSG until August 3rd at the earliest, we have a show in a week at 4-2, wouldn't it have been better to just, I don't know, focus on raising that score?

Anyway, bad decisions aside, once I had started the exercise, I was committed to finishing it and it gave me good things to consider. First, Rico's half pass at the canter is a bit weak. There is no canter half pass at 4-2, so I haven't thought about it in a while. To the right he blows through the right aids and gets on the forehand. To the left he won't get over at all! In addition to the half passes being bad, the lead changes aren't reliable. Sometimes he changes and when he does, it's great! Other times he just doesn't change and demonstrates his athleticism by darting sideways on the wrong lead.

Right now this isn't a big deal but in the future it will become problematic. As we move up to I1, we have to do a zig zag and if that is weak, the pirouettes are weak, and my horse has no medium trot... I'm kind of screwed. So I've decided that my big project this summer is perfecting the zig zag. It's not like the pirouettes, he's incapable of doing a stellar pirouette right now because it takes so much strength. The zig zag is just coordination and balance. So after the show, I'll be addressing this with Tracey, until then we'll just work on perfecting the half pass itself.

Speaking of pirouettes, I did more pirouette canter yesterday! He was kind of a nutter though. He was so lazy that he got behind my leg and I had to kick him out of a few transitions, which annoys me because he leaps out of them and then considers running away with me. Once he knew I was serious though, he gave me some of the best pirouette canter I've felt out of him! I doubt we'll score well on them next weekend, but it's getting to the point where he's really figuring out what I want and I'm figuring out how to keep him active.


Today I'm headed up to Woodside for one lesson. Yeah, driving an hour up and an hour back to teach one lesson isn't all that fun, especially when my car has no a/c and it's going to be in the 80-90s again today. But I need to go to Blue Horse to get a saddle cover for MY NEW DRESSAGE SADDLE. I made an offer on the Custom that I've had on trial and got it! So I gave them my CC number and it's mine! Both Tracey and my saddle fitter approved of how it fit me and Rico.

Gotta run to work now but I have pictures of the saddle and pictures from around the ranch (that need to be edited) that I will put up later!

Riding My Upper Level Horse

My lesson last night went quite well! It was certainly better than my last lesson when the stress of finals, graduating, work, and other factors added up to me having a mental breakdown upon finishing the lesson.

Not a terrible place to come home to after a bad lesson though

Tracey seemed pleased with my score and Rico's performance at the show, but pointed out how generous the judge had been by giving us a 5 on the bad pirouette. Tracey said that it should have been a 4, and I agreed, but I'm definitely not complaining. Last night though, I wanted to leave the pirouettes be, I think Rico likes the footing at home better than the footing at Woodmyst, at least for the canter, so I want to focus on the pirouettes where he feels the best. Plus, I had other issues that I wanted to address.

Recently Rico and I have been struggling a little to the left. I started to think it could be the beginning of the inevitable issues in his left front leg. It felt like he didn't want to put weight on the leg and it certainly crossed my mind that he could be developing the same injury that he had in his right front in the new leg. It was a chronic injury that developed over time, and he has the same conformation fault on the left leg that caused the injury on the right leg. When he finally does sustain this injury, I can't afford the surgery (and wouldn't put him through it again) to fix it and so he'll be retired. This could happen at any time, so it was in the back of my mind that the reason why he was reluctant to weight that leg could have been medical.

But Tracey had another explanation that makes sense too. I tend to ride horses a tiny bit over-bent to the left. It's not a problem at the lower levels, a little over-flexion isn't a huge deal. But when I'm riding a surprisingly sensitive warmblood at this high of a level, the slightest bit of over-flexion can make things go south quickly.

Because I've been riding him a little off center, he's taken to busting through the right rein and leaning in that direction, which is what is causing that feeling that he doesn't want to weight the left front leg. Most of yesterday was spent trying to figure out what straightness on the left side truly felt like so that I could work on it at home. We first worked on the canter. On the left side, I needed to really bring him straight and even if he felt straight, he wasn't straight enough. At the same time, I also needed to bring my left leg a tiny bit back to engage his left hind while keeping my right leg near the girth to hold his shoulder. To the right, everything was perfect except that I need to keep my right hip tight to the saddle so I didn't lose him so much to the inside.

In both directions, Tracey was adamant that I not have my outside leg quite so far back. I've ridden a lot of green beans in my life, so it's a bad habit that I always keep my outside leg back to hold the lead. Obviously Rico knows his leads and doesn't need me to ride like this, in fact, it makes things worse because he thinks I want him to go haunches-in. Evidently I need to remember what it's like to ride an upper level horse!

Upper... Level...? I guess so

After addressing the straightness in the canter, we went directly into the tempis. Rico was way behind my leg at first so after a horrendous attempt at the 4s, Tracey let us have a break. Once we were back in gear, we did an okay line of 3s with Rico's patented final 2. Rico used to be under the impression that the directive for any and all tempis is perform as many changes as you can across the diagonal, the more head shaking and kicking, the better. Now, Rico is much better and understands the directive to be figure out what the count is and passive-aggressively modify the count for one change. Like, what do I do with that? He'll do a beautiful line of 3s and then toss in a 2. So obnoxious.

Luckily after the okay line, we did a PERFECT line where Rico stayed with me and the count was great. Tracey noted a few things that she wants me to change before PSG. First, Rico tends to quicken his pace during the tempis, he wants to rush the last couple of changes. Second, I tend to pull his head back and forth a tiny bit. Unfortunately Tracey knows that tempis are one of Leo's many strengths, so she said "I know you've ridden them straight in the past, stop pulling his head back and forth." Tempis are something that I feel very confident about, so I'm feeling good about fixing those problems this week.

Finally, we worked on the trot and after addressing the same straightness problems. Once as we were in gear, Tracey was very complementary of our half passes and our shoulder-in! Intermediare-I came up (due to my bitching about doing shoulder-in on centerline, a movement I despise) and Tracey didn't discourage me for thinking of that as a goal for Rico, which was great news. I've been trying not to think of the future with him, because of his potential to go lame at any moment, but it was good to know that Tracey didn't have an qualms about him showing well into the FEI levels. I2, however, remains a pipe dream :)


In other news, I've signed up for the Gavilan Chapter show down at Osierlea in a week and a half. I was making the decision between doing 4-2 again, or throwing Rico and I into PSG on a wing and a prayer. I decided to do another 4-2, and then wait until August for PSG. It gives me a solid month and a half to really perfect the pirouettes and obtain a shadbelly so that I can go in really confident and (hopefully) score easily in the 60s. After that it's just showing PSG the rest of the year and finally enjoying my FEI horse!!

In non-horse news, I'm half way through my running program which is getting me ready for a 5k! I'll be running it on July 4th (hopefully, still need to look into that race and figure out work that day) and have plans to run other 5k and 10k races this fall. I'm really enjoying running these days, I can't say the same for my dog...

At least he's cute!

The laziest running partner

Dressage at the Gaits!

It's OVER!!! Let me start by saying that my horse is amazing and we won our 4-2 class with a 65.5%! We won!!! 65.5%!!

He was SO EXCITED to be there!

Alright so from the beginning! I woke up this morning at 5am feeling quite sick. I've been going nonstop for a month now with finals, graduation, numerous client horse shows, and my own show today. Now I finally get a break! Until tomorrow. Anyway, Rico was fairly relaxed when I went out to braid him around 7 so I was convinced that I was going to have a lazy horse in the test. I was beginning to feel so glad that I found my big spurs last night!

Upon arriving at Gilroy Gaits and getting on my animal though, I realized that he was far from lazy. He was beyond stoked to be at a new place AND to be showing that when I started trotting in warm up, I couldn't exactly control him. Every time my spur would touch him, he'd shake his neck and fling whatever leg was in the air much higher. I'm sure we looked completely ridiculous, especially with my ongoing commentary of "we don't need to be this fancy, it's fine if we're not this fancy," to try to calm him down. At the canter he flung himself around the arena, doing lead changes and threatening to buck me off.

By the time we got into the test, I had gone from "I really hope we get a good score so I can justify buying a shadbelly," to "I don't want to fall off, please don't buck me off." All I wanted to do was get through the test without falling off. And we did that and a bit more!

Look at the surprising amount of relaxation!

After the test I was a bit hard on myself. The right pirouette was more of a reining spin and the left one wasn't as good as we've had at home. But honestly, there were no big mistakes which is HUGE for us. The only problem I was a bit miffed about was that an airplane landed next door and Rico would NOT stop staring at it through an entire walk pirouette (which we got a 6.5 on, go figure). I came out feeling like we did our best for where we are in training, and I was just hoping that the score would be over 60.

This horse likes airplanes...?

When I went to pick up my test, I looked at the scoreboard first and found my name with 65.5% and a little 1 next to it. WE WON! I went into the office and got my prize (some fly spray!), ribbon, and test. I was immensely surprised by this! I had expected somewhere between 57% and 61% based on how unsteady the test felt to me and how bad the pirouettes were.

Most of our scores were in the 6-7 range, but we got an 8 on our first centerline AND an 8 on the tempi changes. The collectives were the most exciting part of the test. Rico always gets a 7 on gaits, so that wasn't surprising, but the 7 on impulsion was a great surprise! We earned a 6.5 on submission, which is what I expected, especially because he kind of got distracted by an airplane during a walk pirouette. As for rider scores, I earned a 7 on position and a 6.5 on effect of the aids. And... we got a 7 on harmony between horse and rider! That means a lot to me, because I was once told "you'll never be able to ride this horse elegantly."

Our tempis which earned an 8!! Not lacking expression...

a 7 on this medium trot!

Half pass right

Overall, I'm immensely proud of this animal. He tried really hard today, even though he was super excited about being there and could have completely ruined the test. I felt like I could really ride him through the test, which is not a feeling I normally get with that animal.

The fanciest

I adore this picture

And this one!

I feel like the door to Prix St George is wide open and I'm definitely going to be shopping for a shadbelly soon! I'm not sure exactly when I'll be doing PSG, but I do know that it's closer now than it's ever been :)

Future FEI horse :) 

Catching Up

So I finally got around to putting pictures from this last week on my computer and editing a couple of them! I have hundreds of pictures to go through. Pictures from the dressage show, pictures from my graduation, pictures from the event, plus a few from around the ranch. Luckily I have today off to deal with them!

First, my graduation. I graduated from college recently! Woo! It didn't feel like a big deal because I'm going back to school this fall to get my Master's, but it was a big deal to my family so we celebrated. I dislike having my picture taken so they are taking longer to edit and prepare.

Graduating! My brother, mother, and myself.

The whole family!

In less exciting news, I'm still struggling with my saddle. It's getting to the point where I'm preparing myself financially to buy a new custom made saddle and will then sell the Albion. Before that though, my saddle fitter is supposed to give me a couple of borrowed saddles and come look at my saddle to see what is going on. I'm starting to feel like I should just start riding without a saddle. I'm sure Tracey won't mind me riding sans saddle in our lessons...

Speaking of our lessons, I can't take one for the next two weeks. I haven't been able to ride well enough this week to justify riding with her, and next week we'll have just shown and I want to take Rico on a trail ride that Tuesday. I am bummed, but not too much. We've already gone over the *hard* movements, like the half pass zig zag and the pirouettes. I was thinking about what I wanted to do at the lesson and I could only come up with checking the tempis (which have been perfect recently) and doing some walk pirouettes, extended walk, and maybe checking the shoulder-in to medium transition. So I'm thinking that those things are easily do-able on my own.

Anyway, the Woodside event was this past weekend! I was coaching and working up there, so I didn't have time to watch very much. We did course walk during the Advanced cross country, but I was wheeling the  course so I couldn't take very many pictures. When we finally stopped and watched a bit, I was almost to my car so was only able to get some galloping shots. Luckily, I'm becoming kind of obsessed with galloping shots.

Such cool horses at this level!

This horse was FULL of it! Props to his amazing rider.

Such a shiny horse

Woodside is so gorgeous

This week is fairly light, it's mostly just me riding horses for people and teaching a couple lessons here and there. Then on Saturday I have clients at the show, and Sunday I get to show!

"I've Seen Worse"

I have an announcement... Rico and I are going to show on June 2nd! And we're riding 4-2!

At my lesson last night, I was on top of my shit. I came into the lesson with questions about showing, to which Tracey said "well I haven't seen you in a while..." and I said "yeah but WHAT SHOULD I DO?" Poor Tracey.

I argued my case and asked her to look at the pirouettes so that she could make my decision for me we could figure out what to do. She first gave me an exercise to set him up for them that was basically just riding in and out of pirouette canter without him getting too slow. It turns out that in my hopes of getting him collected, I allow him to slow his canter down but not actually take shorter steps. This means that my discoveries from this weekend were true- the pirouette needs to be more about short, active steps, and less about the big rock back into collected work.

When will I 

get it through my thick skull

that this horse

does not

need to be more collected?!?!

Rico was great to the left, stayed up in front of me and through his back, and gave me a decent pirouette. To the right I struggled to sit still. I didn't know I moved so much, I look way too far ahead, pull on the inside rein, and basically fall to the inside until Rico has to scoop me up. And then I call it a pirouette, blame him for why it's weak, and go on with my life. Needless to say, when I actually sat still, my horse pirouettes just fine to the right. What a concept. He's essentially known what I want for months now, but has just been fighting me.

So then, so then! We stop to start talking about the show and Tracey says "I've definitely seen worse pirouettes at Prix St George, I think you'll be fine." That from Tracey is quite a compliment since she has the highest standards in the world. She's actually seen worse at a higher level! She thinks I will be fine!

We didn't want to over school the pirouettes, but she described some good exercises to do this week:
- Work the quarter pirouettes, half pirouettes are hard on him, and it's all about maintaining him active on short steps in front of my leg, it's much less the turn
- Work the transitions from collected canter to pirouette canter and back, lots of short transitions so that he doesn't get stuck. Pirouettes are 6-8 steps, half pirouettes are 3-4!! He just needs to be on his hocks for 5 steps at the most so there's no reason to school 15 steps of it.
- Work the square turns to get him to use his inside hind leg toward the midline, I tend to push his haunches too far in, so this is really good for me to learn to sit still and ride him straighter.

After that I confessed that I had never been taught how to ride an extended walk properly, and that I thought it was a dumb movement to not get a 7 or 8 on. I should save my shit scores for the pirouettes and the extended trots, not the walk work.  So I now know that extended walk is merely free walk with a bit of contact and have been instructed to ride lots of transitions into it because "Fourth level tests go so fast that the judge needs to make up their mind on the score and the comment about half way through the movement." Good to know! The first several steps of a movement count a LOT. Unless something spectacular or horrifying happens in the movement, the score usually stays the same.

We still had time left, so we did a bit of trot work after I talked to her about the energy. I said that I felt like my seat stifled him, she disagreed and said that my seat was nice. MY SEAT IS NICE. But we did a big serpentine, steep leg yields in each direction, then some walk-trot transitions within shoulder-in. I wasn't quite sure what was going on until the shoulder-in when I realized that his trot was enormous and he was sooo supple and easy to ride in that movement which has always felt a tad awkward. Lots of serpentines focusing on putting him into the new outside rein from the inside thigh and lots of steep leg yields focusing on his responsiveness laterally. Then walk-trot transitions in the shoulder-in to increase engagement in the upward transition.


Overall, I'm STOKED! We have a tough two and a half weeks ahead of us, Rico needs to be fit and so I need to force myself to have time to ride him every day (twice per day when I can). I also need to do a lot of without stirrup work and learn to ride forward in my tiny arena. I'm putting together a conditioning plan to get us in gear and ready for this show which I will post soon!

I can't believe we're actually moving up. We're moving up!!! Yay!

Breaking Down Roadblocks

In light of my lesson on Tuesday night and the entries for my first show of the season due on May 18th, I decided to run through 4-2 today to really figure out where we stand against that test. I've run through it a few times and honestly, everything rides quite easily. It's nothing like the beast of PSG and actually other than the pirouettes, the test is much easier than 4-1.

Before running through it, I worked on the pirouettes for the first time! Woo! The left one is perfect as always, he stayed way up into the contact and only sucked back a little bit. Tracey, I'm sure, would disagree with this, but I totally felt like we could get through PSG or even I1 if the only pirouettes we were required to do were to the left. Not to discount how much his right pirouette has improved! To the right I was pleasantly surprised by his ability to turn. I always felt like we could get the level of collection required to the right, but the moment we started turning, we fell apart. Today he certainly wasn't as rideable in the pirouettes to the right as he was to the left, but he definitely did something that resembled a pirouette and that is improvement!!

Onto the test! The trot work in the test is quite fun and is as if it was made for Rico. Instead of starting out with a big medium across a long diagonal (which is a great way to get Rico running on his face and me paranoid about his front legs), the test starts with shoulder-in down half the long side, then a medium trot on a short diagonal. I understand that this is a hard movement because it really tests that your shoulder-in is correct, a shitty shoulder-in won't straighten out into a good medium... but for Rico, this is great! Less medium trots and it forces me to be present in the shoulder-in.

After the first one of those shoulder-in to mediums, the test has you do a trot half pass zig zag. Rico and I used to struggle through those but after Tracey's half pass boot camp, they're SO easy! Before tonight, I was going to see if we could address this movement in my lesson on Tuesday but I honestly don't think we need to. After another one of the shoulder-in to mediums, we do the walk work. I like that because it allows me to take a breather and collect my thoughts before cantering.

The canter work starts with a medium canter down the long side, then you go across the diagonal and pirouette near X. I love that it starts with a medium canter, I'll go more in depth later, but energetic winter-Rico is turning into lethargic summer-Rico and the medium canter is a good test to see if he's in front of my leg before we have to pirouette. The downside of this test is that it starts with a right pirouette... shmeh. Oh well. Another medium (or extended, whatever) canter and then another across the diagonal, pirouette near X. After returning to the rail, we go across the diagonal with three lead changes near quarterline, centerline, and quarterline again. Then another trot extension and up centerline.

The test tonight rode quite well. The first centerline was good but my halt was off center, ugh, what a ridiculous reason to lose points. The trot work rode quite easily, as did the walk work. I got really anxious coming into the pirouettes since I know they aren't strong, but both were actually okay in the test. No breaking and, although the right one was big and the left one behind my leg, I felt more confident in them than I ever have. The tempis were surprisingly good, he was on the aids and only kicked out once! Final centerline was better since it's in trot :)

I was quite pleased that our first test ride in a while was so successful, but I was not pleased at Rico's attitude toward the test. It's getting hot (90s today) and he's a bit out of shape, so he hasn't had the greatest work ethic in the last week. It's good to know that he needs to be very fit for him to actually focus and work hard, but that doesn't take away how frustrating he was today. I felt like I was lugging him through the entire test. He didn't do any one thing wrong, but nothing was very spectacular and I flapped all over the place to keep him going.

After the test, I went back to the walk to work on the walk pirouettes, since both were a tiny bit big, and found that he was even more behind my leg. That was when I really got frustrated, how hard is it to walk forward? The horse just did a fourth level test! That's hard work! I expect him to be lethargic during his canter work, that's difficult, but the walk? Come on you silly horse! It didn't help that during our walk break after our test, he ran off with me because he saw a pitchfork. Clearly he had energy...

So I put him in canter and we worked on being energetic. It was a tough ride, but in the end he was beautifully in front of my leg, even in the pirouette canter and in the trot half pass! As he became more energetic, he became happier to do his work too, so I think that we need to address the energy from the get go rather than waiting until part way through our ride. Neither of us are happy when he's lazy, and he's certainly not going to be the one to fix it!

The laziest of horses

In other news, I've had a realization about myself. I've been putting off showing all year because I keep feeling like I want my next show to be at 4-2. What is my problem? Why do I think that 4-1 is beneath me when I can't even ride my horse in front of my leg, let alone do a reliable pirouette? I realized that I'm treating him like a client's horse. I'm so scared that I'm going to *ruin* our record by doing 4-1 and doing badly, that I want to just wait and wait and wait to move up. Well, news flash, Rico is not a client's horse and I certainly don't need to treat him like he's eventually going to be for sale by worrying about his record. I'm getting out of the horse business as soon as I graduate from my masters, so why do I care about my record?

So I'm for sure showing at either Dressage at the Gaits (June 1/2) or SFP Chapter (June 8/9).  I'm just going to keep doing 4-1 to improve on my ability to ride all the other movements in the show ring, and when Tracey says "sign up for 4-2 instead," I will do just that. It's time to stop being such chicken shit about bad scores and just SHOW without putting up all these goddamn roadblocks about what tests I need to be riding.



I just went through some pictures and look how different this horse goes now! I need current pictures... these are a bit old:

Look at his neck shape and how high my hands are, yikes

At our first lesson with Tracey, short in the neck

A month after our first lesson, hands lowered and HOLY NECK MUSCLE

Hopefully I'll have another picture soon!

Return to the Pirouettes

Most of today was fantastic, including my great ride on Rico and finding out that we have a new friend in the back yard. He's a 3 foot long (maybe, I didn't measure him or anything) gopher snake! I love snakes... from afar. They're so pretty! Luckily this fella let me get quite close to him and take some pictures:

Not this one...

This one! He was a tad shy at first...

Apparently pots have good drinking water for snakes :)

Cute!

Such a cool animal!

On to my horse! Rico has been getting better and better as we both get back into the swing of things after his hocks were done last week. All this week we've been doing light work, but today I decided to do a bit more and address the pirouettes. With our first potential show (I KNEW I'd chicken out) only a month away, we really need to do a couple of hard weeks on the pirouettes to decide whether to do 4-2 or not.

Prior to the pirouettes, however, I warmed up with several exercises to help improve the swing through Rico's back and hips. My horse is a nice mover, but over the years his gaits have gotten a little less expressive and Tracey mentioned in passing that he needed to use his back more as he worked. I, of course, obsessively record everything she says took note of that. I think that a lot of the problem is my seat being a bit restrictive as I sit his trot. So I used the shoulder-in/haunches-in on the circle exercise and soon he was swinging through his back much better! My back feels good too :)

I then started work on the pirouettes for the first time in I think about three weeks! All I did was work on the pirouette canter (no turn) so I could try to diagnose the problem. I've been trying to put pirouettes on him for six months now and it's just not happening at the pace I expected... I went right first, the hard direction, and it was actually really terrible. I got a bit discouraged but stayed positive, we have to start somewhere, even if somewhere is horrible. The left felt amazing, even better than before his hocks were done. He kept his neck out, stayed straight, sat right down, and stayed fairly well in front of my leg. After that I did a line of perfect 3 tempis (!!!) and tried again to the right. It was a million times better the second try! He's already quite straight in that direction, and even though he became a bit disconnected if I pushed him for more, he gave me really nice work overall.

The best horse!

After today, I have a new theory as to why the pirouettes have been difficult to put on this horse. He's happy to collect, that's not the problem- he'll sit right down on his hocks like it's no one's business. Maybe this is why he developed a rearing problem when he was younger... Anyway, what he struggles with is getting OUT of the collection. Rather than what I always think is the problem (lack of collection), Rico actually struggles with the activity part of the pirouette, so he has to throw himself on his shoulder and hoist himself out of every stride. This is why they feel like I'm dragging a dinosaur out of a tar pit. He feels so HEAVY in them. Leo always felt so light in the pirouettes, not in the connection, but in the front end. Rico doesn't...

Anyway, I may have this theory, but I have NO idea what to do with it! I'm assuming it's going to mean backing off the collection in the pirouettes and making them larger- focusing more on the activity and biomechanics, rather than the collection and size of the pirouette. Tracey will have answers, she always does! I'm hoping I have a lesson with her on Tuesday :)

More pictures from today:

Not a bad place to live during my education!

So pretty in the evenings

He's definitely not a small snake

After getting some water

Damn this thing is big...

Hiding in the pot

Such a cool snake

His markings were so cool!

Chilling in his pot

He let me get pretty close! All these were with my telephoto lens though...

I think he wanted to come get me...

He started getting mad at me, woops!